


Who Is Mysterion?

by Miasunrise



Category: South Park
Genre: Demons, Flowers, Kysterion, M/M, Pining, Superheros, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2019-10-04 13:49:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17305754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miasunrise/pseuds/Miasunrise
Summary: There’s a small swaft of purple mist on the other side of his dorm room, near the door. The self-proclaimed superhero appears from the fog.  “You’re one of the researchers at the library. I’m here to ask for your help.”





	1. yeah, with a boy like that it's serious...

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday present for my gf. She likes k2 and now I do too, ffs.
> 
> Chapter titles are song lyrics, not my own.
> 
>  **Trigger Warnings** : death is talked about a lot, sexual assault is part of the story but **not** described in action, it's South Park so there's some not-socially-correct stuff. Rated M for swears and mild violence.
> 
> Tumblr: [[Mia](https://miasunri.tumblr.com/)]  
> There aren't many fans of this pairing, so any feedback would be really appreciated. :')

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Craig." Kyle nudges his roommate with his foot. The lump on the floor grunts in response, the sound tilting up at the end like a question. "It's eight-thirty. I'm heading to class. You should get up, dude." 

A middle finger emerges from the blankets like a lone tower spawning from the depths of a blue cotton sea. 

"I'll leave the coffee on," Kyle says, turning to head out their dorm room door. Craig Tucker flipping him off is nothing to cry about.

The narrow hallway is tapioca coloured, and always smells a little like mould. It's Monday morning so there are a few empty cups strung along the floor from the weekend, knocked-over bottles of beer and ― a little further down ― a discarded joint with its insides scattered out like a spontaneous grassy field in the midst of all the grey linoleum.

Leviathan is the party dorm. Kyle had known that when he'd enrolled at UIV. It was also the cheapest dorm, and so goes the reality of a less-than-wealthy college student.

The walk through campus to his classroom is brisk. He feels autumn air pass by under his hair, across the back of his neck, the smell of his shampoo coming with it. Classes had only been going on for a week so far, but Kyle's already dropped back to the monotony of his schedule. It's not much different from last year. Even a lot of his profs are the same.

UIV's business-law concurrent program has Kyle in his third year, taking six courses. He'd be assed to list them all to anyone. Basically, two are stats related, one is business etiquette, and the other two are memorizing law textbooks until his eyes drop out of his own fucking head.

Monday morning's 8:30 class is Environmental Law. He'd done the reading last night — chapter three, subsection six, clause i through xiii through to Chapter five, subsection nine, clause v through xi. He's glad to have a decent memory so he doesn't need to read it all more than once.

He's been sitting three rows from the front of the lecture hall. Perfect for paying attention when he wants to, and ignoring the class when he doesn't. The room sits about six hundred students, but only four hundred or so are taking the course this semester.

A girl from his hometown, Bebe Stevens, is taking the class with him. They weren’t close as kids but now, far away from that helltown, they’ve become friends. Kyle sees it like some sort of silent solidarity. They share a past. One that no one would ever believe. Sometimes he’s relieved she's there just so he can't start thinking he'd made up his entire childhood.

When he walks into the classroom, Bebe isn't in her usual seat. They sit next to each other most days. A quick glance across the room and Kyle sees her unruly explosion of blond hair over at the giant whiteboard at the front of the room. She's got her hand on someone's back, bent over to be nearer to eye level and speaking softer than she normally does.

“You should go back to your room then,” she's saying. “Go get a hot drink and take a nap. I'll come by after class, and we can report that asshole.”

“No―” The girl Bebe's talking to has short brown hair and is probably in her first few weeks of college. She looks barely 18. "It's fine." She wipes some stray tears from chocolate-coloured eyes.

“It is way beyond not fucking fine,” Bebe says. “You're practically a minor! And even if you weren't he can't abuse his position like that.”

“I j―”

“And fuck knows how many other people he's done it to!”

The girl looks at Bebe miserably. Kyle takes his seat at his desk, not wanting to stick his nose into something that isn't his business, content enough to eavesdrop.

“Don't tell my brother, okay?” The girl asks. “He'll just freak out.”

“You know I can't promise that.”

“Please, Bee?” 

Bebe seems to melt at the nickname. Kyle has no idea who this girl is, which is weird considering Bebe seems really close to her.

“If you come with me to report that asshole after class, I won't tell him.” She moves a strand of hair behind the girl's ear. She looks just like an older sister. Kyle's always liked Bebe well enough, but he hadn't known her to be sweet. “Okay?" 

The girl sighs out slowly, her hands shaking where they’re holding her elbows. “I'll think about it.” 

Bebe sighs. “Fine. Do you want me to walk you back to the room?” 

“No. I'm okay.” Bebe gives her a look Kyle’s been on the other end of too many times to count. The brunette nods and says, “Really.”

She leaves, holding her books tight to her chest.

Bebe comes over and takes her usual seat next to him. By now, students are starting to file in and the large theater-esque classroom begins to buzz.

“What happened?” Kyle asks.

Bebe flips her hair over one shoulder. She's wearing her red sweater, the same colour as roses and cheap lipstick and bad fake-blood in B horror films.

“One of her professors assaulted her.”

“Like…”

Bebe nods to the unasked question. “Yeah, like that.” She starts digging her books out, dropping them on the desk. “I want to say I'm surprised but humanity has disappointed me a million times already.” 

“She looks sixteen,” Kyle says.

Bebe snorts. "She _is_ sixteen. She finished high school early." Taking her pen out from her purse, she slips it behind her ear, through her mass of hair. Kyle does the same thing sometimes, but not in class. "Her parents and mine were childhood friends, so they asked if I'd be her dorm-mate, at least for her first year. Jesus _christ_ I'm pissed."

"Who was it?"

"Valganhorn."

"Fuck off."

"I'm serious."

Professor Valganhorn is their Childhood and Family Law Specialist. Something like that, anyway. Kyle can't remember the exact title ― just that it involves kids.

He has a hard time paying attention during class. He's no bleeding heart warrior for the rights of women and so he's not disillusioned to why he's suddenly so angry. It's reactionary hate. The othering of someone who's done something so sick you'd do anything to be separate from them. But still he can't believe one of the Law profs would do something like that, and he can't believe it can happen so quietly, and he can't stand that he's stuck in class instead of doing something. What's the point of a law degree if it keeps him from actually enforcing the fucking law? And anyway he knows, like he’s sure Bebe knows, that that girl telling anyone is pretty pointless. She's up against one of the school's oldest professors. He brings in money, and lots of it. 

All of it bothers Kyle like it would bother anyone, but he doesn't know if he should help. Does he want to because he should want to? Is that enough?

When class is over he turns to Bebe and tells her he's there if they need anything.

He means it, but it sounds flat anyway. Sounds like he's just saying what he's supposed to say. Only acting appropriately to bypass the whole situation.

“Thanks Kyle,” she says, smiling at him.

“No problem,” he replies, because whatever the morality of it all, it isn't.

He has work after class, until five o'clock today. Kyle gathers up his books, frowning at the blank page in front of him. He hadn't taken notes. 

His part-time is at the school's library. The official title is Sub Assistant Researcher and Analyst. Basically when first years or whoever can't use the library he helps them out. It's boring, but easy and gives him some pocket money. Sometimes masters students or profs need help finding old documents or research papers buried in the basement or hiding somewhere in the university's database. Those jobs are more interesting. He's always liked digging through books and files.

Kyle takes a seat at his desk. It’s on the ground floor of the library off in a corner, under a sign reading: ‘Need Assistance?’  He opens his textbook to do some reading while he waits for someone to need said assistance.

The library is a large two-story room. There isn’t a full ceiling between the first and second floors, but instead an atrium that goes around the perimeter. The eastern wall is made almost entirely of glass, four giant windows that let the sun in every morning, heating the building even in the winter. UIV isn't a wealthy campus but they're economical, Kyle thinks. The furnishes are pale-blue and modern, large circular tables dotted along the bottom floor and study rooms for rent by the hour off to the sides.

There are couches set along the windowed wall on the upper atrium. He's spent a lot of early mornings there with a hot coffee and the yellow sunlight bleeding over his skin. He likes the library, just as anyone comes to like a spot they return to day after day. 

Three hours into his shift ― just as Kyle's about to hope no one will ― someone plops down into the empty chair next to his desk. It's on wheels so the seat creaks and shifts slightly to the right. Kyle looks up from his textbook, _Financial Curves of the Twenty First Century and How to Predict the Western Markets_ , and sees a tall boy blinking over at him. 

He has sun-spotted freckles, hair that expresses an indifference to grooming, and when he opens his mouth to talk Kyle can see a gap between his front teeth.

"Hey," he says. His voice has a slight scratch to it, like an old record player. "Are you who I ask for research help?"

Kyle nods and wakes his computer up. "Yup." The monitor blinks on, blue light stinging his eyes a little. "What do you need?"

The boy slouches in his seat. Kyle's never seen anyone look so comfortable in the library's chairs before.

"I need to know how the sky looked in Vienna on June first, seventeen eighty two," he says.

Kyle eyes that gap in his teeth before frowning up at him. "What?" 

"It's for a painting," he says as if that explains the weird request; Kyle's not an astronomer. Colour catches his eye and with one look down at the other boy’s hands Kyle can see they're covered in paint. Midnight blue mostly, but odd dabs of red and white. They're long and boney and somehow worn, like they're older than the rest of him. "I thought I had it right but I suck at— most shit." He laughs.

"Okay..." Kyle drags his eyes up from the hands.

The boy smiles. It's not a full one, more sheepish and sorry than anything complete. "Do you think you can find it?" His grey eyes drop down to Kyle's lap, looking slowly, pulling themselves up his hips and torso and chest, neck, jaw, all over his face, without shame or a single shift in the expression. That sorry smile starts to seem pretty fake.

Fucking hell. 

"Stop," Kyle says, frowning at the other guy. 

"Stop what?" 

"You know what." 

"Hey." He grins then, this one full and wild and reaching, and leans forward in his seat. "I just came here for research help. Not my fault the library's assistant is sexy."

Kyle huffs through his nose. He looks at the monitor, opening the search engine, the university's website, and his contact list. He'll need Jimmy's help. “You know it's really unhealthy to blame _what_ you're attracted to _for_ your attraction to it. It can fuck you up,” he says.

The blond looks at him, grin falling, before he breaks into a small laugh. 

"You're probably right."

"I'm definitely right." Kyle opens Word to jot down the date. "June first, seventeen eighty two, Vienna, Austria?"

"You got it." 

"Okay." Kyle waves a hand at him. "Give me half an hour." 

The boy opens his mouth, shuts it, and opens it again. His posture is still entirely relaxed. He doesn't seem bothered or embarrassed at having Kyle call him out. 

It probably happens to him a lot.

"Thanks," is all he says before he gets up and goes back to wherever he'd come from.

It takes Kyle’s just over twenty-five minutes. It turns out wanting to know how the night sky looked in certain places throughout history isn’t an unpopular question. Jimmy had emailed someone from Nasa who, despite her shock that he’d somehow gotten her email address, had sent him a program to get the correct star-map for that date. Kyle had cross-referenced it with a few books from the same year, and voila: the constellations Scorpius and Ophiuchus, and a full moon.

It’s the sky just after sunset. He’s pretty sure that’ll be good enough.

The blond guy comes back a few minutes after Kyle’s finished. He slumps himself down in the chair the same way he had before, completely comfortable, like a mound of moss that’d been growing on an old tree for centuries. 

He puts a paper cup of tea down on the table, right next to Kyle’s hand. There’s a small smile across his mouth.

“Any luck?” 

“What’s that?” Kyle asks. The guy’s finger nails are dyed with paint — and jagged, probably from a bad habit. He thinks he hears the joints crack as he slides his hand off the cup. 

“Tea.” 

“Uh huh.” 

His small smile blooms as Kyle waits; without doing anything he thinks he’d caused the slow expansion. 

“It’s for you.” 

“Why.”

The guy laughs. “Because you did me a favour.”

“Did I.”

“Are you always this uptight?”

Kyle narrows a glare right through the guy. He isn’t being uptight, he’s being careful. Someone checking him out at work, who holds himself like he thinks he’s an Adonis, some prize or a prince, who acts like his flirting is a favour. It’s an instant red flag. It would be for anyone.

There’s something in the corners of his smile though that takes away the confidence. The bags under his eyes echoing hard work and overthinking. A lack of light in the way he’d walked over.  

“Thank you,” Kyle hears himself say, separate from his initial intent. “How’d you know I like peppermint?” He can smell it wafting up around him like a warm mist. 

The guy’s smile returns.

“I guessed.”

“Dude,” Kyle frowns at him, “are you a fucking stalker?”

He laughs. Again.

“Okay, I asked the lady out front. With the black hair,” he says, gesturing to his own.

That would be Wendy, another friend from South Park. Another person who’d grown up in that helltown probably with layers of irreversible psychosis.

“Look. I’m sorry for being a huge slut and checking you out. I really did come over for help.”  His long fingers dig into his pockets and he leans back away from Kyle, the chair creaking. “Did you find anything?”

Kyle thinks he’s never heard a guy call himself a slut. He guesses it doesn’t matter.

“Yeah. You have an email I can send it to?”

“Sure do.” His jaw goes tight as he spells it out for Kyle. It’s weird to see on him, the strain. It doesn’t match the easy way he’d sat down in the chair, or how he’d slid the cup of tea over. He wonders where the expression had come from.

When he finishes spelling out his email — first name and last — Kyle knows.

“Yeah, that Kenny,” he says, not looking guilty or even unhappy, just resigned. “Anyway, thanks. I’ll see you around.” 

He’s gone before Kyle has time to process a reply.


	2. call me the brightness of a friday night

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Craig,” Kyle says, nudging his roommate with his foot again. 

It’s a Thursday night, weeks after Kenny McCormick had wandered over to his desk, and Kyle is once again trying to convince Craig to get his ass out of bed.

Craig grunts from the floor.

“Dude if you get up I’ll cook. Did you get to the Basement?” 

“Shut up, Mom.” 

“Do you _want_ to fucking pass.”

Craig groans like nothing worse had ever happened to anyone in the course of human history. Then he throws an arm up in a dramatic wave, tossing the blankets off of himself and glaring up at Kyle like he’s the sun unwanted on some early morning.

“Fuck.” 

Kyle rolls his eyes. “Just get up. You want stir fry?”

Craig flips him off and says yes, even adds a ‘thank you’ that Kyle feels is earned. While he showers, Kyle cooks and reads one of his law textbooks. 

Aside from Wendy and Bebe, Craig is the only other person that had come here from South Park. His need to sleep ten hours a day, shitty attitude, and false-indifference are a direct result of that small fucking mountain town. That and his father trying to enforce some alpha-male hypersexual ‘this is how to be a MAN’ bullshit on him since he was seven years old. It’d taken Craig ten years to tell his dad to fuck off. There’s no escaping your past though, in Kyle’s opinion. It sinks into your blood.

They eat in relative silence, but it’s typical and Craig’s working on his essay so Kyle stays quiet. If Craig doesn’t do well he’ll end up back in South Park, and like fuck Kyle’s going to watch that happen. He’d helped Stan, Wendy, and Craig get out and he’ll do whatever _any_ of them need him to do to get them out ― no matter how many times they call him ‘mom.’

Kyle finishes first and Craig says he’ll clean up, so he showers, brushes his teeth, and gets ready for bed. He leaves his bedroom window open a crack for the night, not minding the cool air, actually kind of enjoys it and looking out at the sky.

He reads himself to sleep. _The Law of Business Synergy and Corporations_ isn’t exactly a riveting tale so’s he’s out in under ten minutes.

Hours later, in the daze of half-sleep, Kyle feels something knocking against his head. Thunk thunk thunk. In the midst of pre-REM there’s a malnourished squirrel tapping at his temple like some nuts might fall out. Groaning, he swats at it, but the rodent starts pecking with its sharp teeth instead, chipping away at his skin. It tears a chunk off, blood flowing and with an airy wide gasp Kyle sits up straight in bed, grabbing at the side of his face.

He’s all there — he touches all over his cheeks and forehead. All there. Kyle’s breathing slows down. He sets his hand over his forehead, wondering what the fuck that was all about.

Hidden in the dark quiet of his still room, someone clears their throat. 

Kyle’s heart shoots into his mouth. He jumps, head whipping up to look around his room. He moves fast enough for the tendons in his neck to pop. 

A hooded figure is in his room. He’s only feet from his bed. There’s black cloth covering his mouth, a dark cape cascading down his back, and a bright purple M etched into his chest.

Kyle screams without concern for dignity. He twists his body back and grabs the metal baseball bat he keeps next to him for exactly two reasons: one, he grew up in South Park, and two: _he grew up in South Park_.

The intruder’s eyes widen, two bright lights amidst the shadow of his clothes.  “Woah, wa―”

“Get the FUCK out!”

“Wait,” the freak in the hood and cape says, holding a hand out. 

Standing on his bed in his checkered pjs, Kyle grips the bat for his life. He glares down hard at the intruder. He’d been done letting ass-wipes screw with him when he was eight years old. “If you don’t get the hell out of my room right now I will beat your fucking head in!”

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Well fuck me if I don’t believe you!” 

The hooded guy has the fucking audacity to look like he’s the one who should be pissed off.

“My name is—” 

Kyle leaps off the bed and swings the bat down hard, aiming for his back and shouting. 

In a blooming mound of purple mist the intruder skirts to the left, avoiding the bat. Kyle ends up hitting the vinyl hardwood instead. He dents the floor. The vibration from impact shudders up his arm. Swearing, Kyle lifts the bat back up and turns to face the caped freak again. 

He lunges at him, bat at the ready.

The intruder dodges it in another purple cloud. “Where the heck did you learn to fight?”

Kyle doesn’t answer. He turns on the balls of his socked feet to face him again, this time holding the bat with one hand. He heaves it down from high overhead, the arch giving it more momentum.  The hooded freak side steps it again, a swirl of translucent mist trailing behind him.

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“No, not really,” Kyle says, turning in a swooping circle. His intruder isn’t anywhere in sight. He feels sweat rolling down his back. He hasn’t had to do this sort of thing in awhile. “Stop fucking hiding.”

“You’re trying to kill me!”

“YOU snuck into MY bedroom!” Kyle grips the bat tighter, backing himself against the wall at the end of his bed. “You don’t get to complain.” He starts panting, his adrenaline wearing off. “You don’t...” he repeats through half a breath, trailing off. Kyle leans against the wall behind him.

“Look,” the hooded figure says, still out of sight. The voice sounds like it’s coming from six different directions all at once. “I’m sorry for sneaking in. I didn’t know how else to talk to you.”

Kyle snorts. “Oh god I wonder. Maybe say hello in the fucking daylight like someone who’s not a fucking stalker??”

“Okay. Is it really not obvious?”

“ _What_.”

“Didn’t you see all the mist?” The intruder asks, “And the disappearing?”

Kyle rolls his eyes and glares at his closet. Somehow he thinks that’s where the guy is hiding. “So what?” He grips the bat tightly again. It’s down at his side now. “You’re a demon, or a demigod, some fairy-tale brought to life from some government experiment gone wrong. Did Cartman send you? I swear to jesus I’m going to kill that bastard. How the hell can he be fucking with me when I am _seven-hundred miles_ _—_ ”

“I’m a superhero,” he says like he’s not so sure.  “And I don’t know who that is.”

Kyle keeps his eyes wide open, but he still can’t see the hooded figure anywhere.

“Look—” there’s a break in his tone, a lightening, some emotion lifting, “—a girl almost got raped by one of the professors here.”

Kyle feels himself quiet suddenly. His heart keeps hammering, though, and he keeps his guard up.

“I need someone to help me stop him.”  There’s a small swaft of purple mist on the other side of his dorm room, near the door. The self-proclaimed superhero appears from the fog.  “You’re one of the researchers at the library. I’m here to ask for your help.”

Kyle takes in the outfit. It’s not spandex, but still pretty fitted. There’s a nearly-black violet cape with a lofty hood that bundles down around his shoulders and cheeks. The suit itself is a grayish mauve. There’s a stupid looking bright purple M sewn over his chest. The cloth covering his face from the nose down is actually the same violet as his hood, and makes his blue eyes the only thing visible.

“If you can dig up his address,” the guy continues, “I can stakeout his house and record him.”

Still and staring, Kyle takes a few beats to weigh all of this. It sounds like kind of a shit plan, and he doesn’t have a track record for Best Decision Maker in the World. Definitely not. Is his screwed up childhood the reason he can’t just walk away from shit like this? Or is _he_ the only reason? He knows what Stan would say. But he doesn't want to be the kind of person who does what's easy. He doesn't want to be someone who says they're mad, that they want to help, just to look good. Just to pass some societal standard of ethic.

Pasificism had never once been okay with him.

Sighing slowly, Kyle glares at the hooded hero. “Did you really need to dress up and sneak into my room at three in the morning to ask me?”

“Yes. This way, you have no idea who I am.”

He laughs once. “That’ll mean shit all if I’m the one who gets caught,” he says. 

“You won’t be,” he says, folding his arms over his chest, “And if you are, tell them some freak in a purple bodysuit broke into your room at night and threatened you.” The guy might be smiling under the cloth; his eyes scrunch around the corners and brighten. “So?” He asks. 

Kyle squints at him. “Four questions.” 

“Shoot.” 

“You really don’t know who Eric Cartman is?” 

He shakes his head. “No man.” 

“How long have you been...” Kyle waves a hand up and down the hooded weirdo in his bedroom. “Doing this.”

“Since I was nine years old.” He shrugs. “This town sort of knows me.”

“Okay.” He sets the bat down against the wall, and walks over to his desk. “We’re not just going to record someone getting assaulted, right? We’ll stop him.”

“Right,” the guy says, keeping himself pressed against the far wall.

Kyle sits down at his laptop and turns it on. Last question. “What am I supposed to call you?” He asks, keeping his eyes on the screen.

The so-called hero walks over, his footsteps as light as air.

“Mysterion.”

Kyle thinks it's the dumbest name for a superhero he's ever heard.

 

 

 


	3. he'll make you dance as smoothly as the dolphins swim

 

 

* * *

 

 

Kyle had told Mysterion to give him a few weeks to dig up the professor's address. At first he'd thought it would take him a couple hours at most, but it turns out the old man is insanely secretive about his personal life. No surprise there, he guesses, considering what he's trying to get away with.

He’d been searching for the past six days, and had finally managed to dig up the address on the seventh. Now, he guesses, he just waits for the hero to sneak into his room at night again. He hadn’t left Kyle a way to reach him. 

Craig is already awake when Kyle gets up that morning. It's ten AM so it's not a huge shock, but Craig still doesn't normally get up until after noon on the weekend. Kyle blinks at him a few times from his bedroom door leading out to their small shared kitchen.

"Jesus dude," Craig says, his blue eyes stuck to Kyle's hair. "Something living in there?"

"Yes," he replies, looking at his roommate with profound and solemn sincerity, "All of my crippling anxiety."

Craig snorts. "There's coffee."

He's glad to see Craig sitting at the table with one of his literature books. He hadn’t wanted to come to college at all. _What’s the fucking point in a lit degree? What the fuck would I do with that? Exactly what I’m doing now, working at City Wok cleaning up after disgusting grease-covered monkeys who feel the fucking need to look me dead in the eye and say ‘Oh! You’re Tucker’s kid.’ like they know I’ll amount to shit all and me working here is just the universe doing what it’s supposed to_ _—_ Kyle had put his foot down, literally, and told Craig if he wants to rot away in South Park that’s fine, but Kyle is getting the hell out and there is an empty spot in his car for him if Craig decides to stop being a fucking cock about it.

It’s not about what he can or can’t do with a degree in literature. It’s about getting away from his father’s hyper-masculine ideals, which Wendy then assured him were fucking poison, and escaping their hometown.

“How’s the book?” Kyle asks, pouring himself coffee. It’s Saturday so no class today. Just hours of studying.

Craig shrugs. “It’s good,” he says, as flat as ever, which from him probably means it’s fantastic. ‘It’s good’ is what he used to say about Red Racer. “You know Tolstoy?” 

Kyle doesn’t know anything about literature. His life is law texts and market algorithms. The thought of the day of reading laid out ahead of him ( _A Practical Guide to Federal Evidence: Eleventh Edition, Advanced Business Law and the Legal Environment, Administrative Agency Litigation: Cranbrooke v. Intellex, International Arbitration: Claimant, Contract Doctrine Theory & Practice: Volume 1_) makes him a little sick.

“What’s it about?” Kyle asks, sitting down at their small fold-out table. He should really get started but somehow he can’t force himself today. Not yet.

Craig scrunches his eyebrows at him. Kyle’s never asked him before. But he shrugs after a moment and says, “This guy spends his whole life doing what he thinks he’s supposed to, thinking he’s living life the right way. Then he gets sick, starts to die, and realizes he’s never really lived in the first place.”

“ _That’s_ cheery.”

Craig looks his face up and down, slowly, like he’s found something he’s never seen before. Considering they’ve known each other for nearly two decades Kyle can’t imagine what it is. “You should read it,” he says, looking back down at his book, “I’ll put it in your room when I’m done.”

Kyle’s not sure he’ll actually read it, but he says thanks and they finish their coffee in silence.

After about an hour Kyle finally manages to drag his ass into his room to gather the books he needs to read today, and continues to drag it all the way to the library. He snipes his favourite spot after some first-years leave it. It’s on the north-east corner of the window-pained atrium, second floor, on a blue couch in the sun. It’s warm enough even in the Fall that he takes his sweater off. He nestles down, opens his first textbook ( _Boards that Deliver: Advancing Corporate Governance from Compliance to Competitive Advantage_ ), and gets his highlighter ready.

He reads for about four hours, from ten until two, when he gets hungry and finally has to take a break. His eyeballs feel like they’re about to fall out of his face when he puts the book down. Kyle leaves all his stuff on the couch and heads down from the indoor-balcony to the small café just on the other side of the desk he works at.  

The shop is usually empty on the weekends. Most students live off campus. There are only three people in here today: himself, the cashier, and a wad of messy blond hair that makes Kyle’s gut sink.

“Good morning,” Kyle says as casually as he can when blue eyes land on him.

The long mouth spreads into an even longer smile, the gap in his front teeth showing. “Well it is now,” he says, and he _knows_ how stupid it is because he laughs at his own lame line then shakes his head, still grinning, and continues, “Sorry. I can stop.”

“I don’t believe you,” Kyle says, “I’m pretty sure it’s like a nervous tick. You should get it checked out.”

“You want to?" 

“Hm?” 

“Check me out.” 

Kyle rolls his eyes and mentally tries to work out a comeback that involves _checking_ Kenny _out_ of the room, but thinks it’s stupid and gives up. 

Kenny grins again, somehow looking triumphant though Kyle’s not sure what he’s won. 

“Are you working today?” 

“Tonight,” Kyle answers.

“Oh. So what are you doing here?” 

“Studying.”

“Studying what?”

“Law.”

Kenny raises one of his eyebrows. “Law,” he repeats, as if Kyle had told him he was studying clowning or taxidermy or nineteenth-century ballooning.

“Yes.” Kyle turns from him and pulls a paper cup out of the stack, filling it up with buttercream coffee. It smells just as warm and sweet as he needs it to.

“Why Law?” Kenny steps in line beside him when he asks. He has a good foot and a half on Kyle, who hadn’t ever considered himself particularly short but is now forced to reconsider. Stan is only an inch or two taller than him and he’s been Kyle’s main point of reference for his entire life.

He looks up at grey eyes and finds them searching. His mouth trips on the first word it tries to form ( _I-It’s, uh_ ―) but he continues on, hoping Kenny isn’t going to say anything.

All he does is grin again and Kyle’s gaze drops down to the gap between his front teeth. “It’s what my father did,” Kyle says. 

Kenny’s smile falls. For some reason Kyle’s head is filled instantly with warm summer rain and fat green leaves and he thinks, suddenly, definitely, urgently, that he needs to get the hell out of there. 

“You like it?” Kenny asks him.

“Yeah,” Kyle says, feet taking him to the exit. “Gotta go.” Perks of working at the library include free coffee. He waves to the cashier on his way out. “See ya.”

He returns to his atrium perch in the sunlit corner as fast as he can. The mounting stack of law and business texts are waiting for him, casting a long shadow across the carpet. There’s a sharp pain in his stomach. Probably ate something. Ignoring it, Kyle takes a seat and opens his textbook again. He has two more chapters to get through before his evening shift at work.

There are stories about Kenny McCormick that fly around campus just as fast and bad as some of the STIs. He hasn’t ever paid much attention to them, but Kyle can line them up next to each other like dominos: He slept with Professor Keeton to pass first year chem, Did you know he went from dorm to dorm in Vega last night just asking who wanted head?, Half the varsity soccer team that’s right, Well I heard he let six guys come on his face at once, That’s nothing I heard he likes it up the ass from girls, Last weekend I saw him chasing after Maria Mendoza **,** Fucking sad, What a slut, _I’m sorry for being a huge slut and——_

Five minutes go by before Kyle realizes he’s reading the same line of text over and over. He looks away from the page, outside the window. The sun’s low and the sky’s mostly clear, except for a grey haze of fog rolling in from the ocean. He’d rather be outside. He’d rather be swimming, even though it’s getting cold. He’d rather be doing a lot of things.

He sticks his nose back in his textbook and reads for another three hours, until the sun’s nearly gone completely and it’s time for his shift.  

The library is even more dead on Saturday evening, but they still need someone to run it which leaves Wendy at the front desk and him near the back under the Need Assistance? sign. He sets his textbooks on the floor by his feet and himself down in his chair. 

It’s dead-quiet. But about an hour in a bird-flock of blond hair walks by. His hands are covered in paint again and even though Kyle lifts his head to say something, maybe to ask if he’s headed to the Basement to do his painting, nothing comes out. ‘ _What a slut’_ jumps into his mind and the echo of those words chokes his own back, holding his tongue tight.

Kenny doesn’t look over at him anyway.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: some of the law texts are real books and I own none of them.
> 
> Thank you for all the comments!


	4. i believe in all your fantasies, as silly as they seem

 

 

* * *

 

 

Kyle is up late that night after work, reading Accounting Principles: A Business Perspective. After a full twelve hours of studying he always feels lightheaded, and like his eyeballs are resting on the book pages themselves. _There’s no other way to get a law degree and you have to work hard for what you want_. That’s what his dad had said and lately Kyle can hear the words in his own voice. There’s no other way. He flips the page over, the lobes of his brain hammering and swelling against his skull.

 _‘Although accounting information plays a significant role in reducing uncertainty within the organization, it also provides financial data for persons outside the company. This information tells how management has discharged its responsibility for protecting and managing the company's resources. Stockholders have the right to know how a company is managing its investments. In fulfilling this obligation, accountants prepare financial statements such as an income statement, a_ _—' *****_

Someone taps on his bedroom window. Kyle hears it like a clear bell through a fog. He shuts the book and sets it on his bed, standing up and walking over. Two bright orbs stare back at him through the glass. The window unlocks with a click, and Mysterion is climbing into his room with hardly a sound.

“Can’t you just like… teleport in here?” Kyle asks, closing the window behind him.

Mysterion shrugs. “I thought that might be rude.”

He shrugs back and thinks there’s something tense in the air. Kyle hasn’t spoken to him since the first night they met — which _had_ been sort of a disaster.

Rubbing at his eyes, Kyle says, “I’m sorry.” His words stick when Mysterion’s gaze falls on him. It almost glows it’s so blue. “For trying to kill you last time, I mean.”

The hero’s expression doesn’t change. “Forget about it.”

“You’d understand if you knew where I grew up.” 

“It’s okay.” He folds his arms over that purple M along his chest. “Did you find the address?” 

“Yeah, last night.” Kyle walks over to his computer and presses a key to turn it on. He opens up the sticky note he’d written the address on, though he’d memorized it just to be safe. “He’s on South Sacramento Drive. It’s about seven miles from here.” He writes it on a real sticky note and hands it over. 

Mysterion takes it and hides it somewhere behind his cape. “Thank you.”

“Sure thing.”

Then the hero turns around, apparently to exit back out the window or maybe to disappear from Kyle’s room in a violet haze. Before he can, Kyle reaches out to grab his upper arm. 

“Hey.” He tugs until Mysterion turns just enough to look back at him.  “I’m coming with you.” 

“No, you’re not.”

“I am.”  Letting go of his arm, Kyle walks around to stand in front of Mysterion. He’s tall without a broad chest, but his arms had had some muscle, more than he’d expected.  It’s hard to tell under that hood and cape. “You don’t know what this guy’s capable of,” Kyle says, “He might kill you, dude.”

“He can try.” The hero looks uninterested before frowning at Kyle. “You’re not coming.”

“You can either take me with you or watch me follow.” 

“I could knock you out.” 

“You can try,” Kyle says, his mouth spreading into a type of grin he hasn’t felt in a long while. “But you’re not the scariest thing that’s snuck into my room at night.” 

Mysterion snorts but even through the cowl Kyle can tell that he’s smiling. It’s in the corners of his eyes, in the lines that stretch out just under them, and in the way his ears twitch.

Mysterion clears his throat before he speaks again.

“You can come, but if things get bad you have to do what I say.”

“I make absolutely no promises.”

The hero snorts softly again. He holds one arm out wide, cape unfolding along his left side. “We can walk, if you want. But this is faster,” he says, his eyebrows knit tight. “I know it’s hard to trust some guy in a purple onesie when you don’t even know my name, but I’m not going to do any...”

“Oh fuck off,” Kyle says, “You don’t scare me dude.” 

Taking the few steps between them, he tucks himself into Mysterion’s left side, his arm just behind Kyle’s neck and shoulders. 

It’s warm, a lot warmer than he’d thought the guy would be. He’d been expecting him to be frigid like the night outside he’d come from. But he’s as warm as the morning sun through the window Kyle had spent his day studying under. He smells like summer rain and fresh morning fog. It seems bizarre for someone so dark and — well — _mysterious_ _—_ to smell like a rainforest at dawn.

“Alright,” Mysterion says, wrapping his cape around Kyle. The arm draped around him is just as warm as the rest of him, and the smell of water goes sort of rosey, like a hot garden, and Kyle isn’t sure if he’s smelling it anymore or just seeing it somehow spread down along the arm over his back, vines twisting around them.

“Ready?” 

He swallows. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

First everything flashes violently purple, the mist and light bleeding into his eyes until they’re filled with it. The smell of wildflowers is gone, replaced with old blood like rust and mold from ancient halls buried under centuries of dirt. Kyle hasn’t hallucinated this vividly since he was thirteen and Cartman hid shrooms in his food at his bar mitzvah. Stan had punched him in the face.  Twice. He broke Cartman’s nose, and the blood splattered all over his kippah.

“Who’s Stan?” Mysterion is asking.

Kyle blinks sparks out of his eyes. “Huh?” 

“You were saying something about Stan punching the shit out of ‘the fatass.’” Kyle looks up at him, lightning-stripes of purple mist still in his eyes. He can feel his mouth hanging open like a dumb cow. Mysterion shrugs. “Your words, not mine,” he says. 

Kyle looks out around him. They’re in an open street. The night air is cool, heavy with water and the smell of dead leaves. His right side is warm where he’s still huddled against the other guy.

“Stan’s my best friend,” he says, stepping out of Mysterion’s cape. Kyle holds the side of his aching head. “What just happened?” 

A gloved hand reaches out, but he watches it drop before it gets anywhere near him. Kyle frowns at it as Mysterion says, “Most people don’t stay conscious. You probably just passed out.” 

“But how does it work?” He asks, taking a step closer. “We went somewhere, right? We weren’t on Earth.”

“It’s inter-dimensional.”

“It looked like R'lyeh.”

Mysterion’s eyes bulge like Kyle had just pumped steam into his head. His shoulders snap taut and he rounds on him. “How the fuck do you know what R'lyeh looks like?”

“Relax dude.” Kyle holds his hands up, looking at the hero carefully. “That guy I asked you if you knew ― Eric Cartman? He used Cathulhu to trap me and my friends in R'lyeh. We would’ve died, but… Well, this mint-berry kid saved us. Don’t ask. It was weird.”  He watches Mysterion’s eyes deflate to a relaxed expression. “What’s with the pissy attitude?” 

“Nothing. C’mon.”

Mysterion starts waking, and Kyle steps in line beside him. 

“Did you think I was a spy sent to destroy you?” He asks, looking up at the taller boy as they walk down the street. 

“Shut up.”

“That’s right, they sent a scrawny Jewish boy. From the netherworld. They grow Jews there like fucking parsnips.”

“You’re a smartass.” 

“So you’ve noticed.” 

“It’s hard not too.”

Kyle laughs.

“What?” Mysterion asks.

“You know, you noticed.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“My a—”

Kyle clamps his mouth shut so fast he bites his tongue. It stings all the way to the back of his throat. His face heats up when he catches Mysterion turning to look at him from the corner of his eye. What the _fuck_ is he saying? Kyle stares straight ahead, morbid embarrassment building pressure in his gut.

“Are you okay?” The hero asks, sounding like he’s trying not to laugh. 

“Sorry.” Kyle hears the squeak in his own voice and rubs at face. “I don’t even—” He clamps up. “Sorry.”

Mysterion might open his mouth to reply but Kyle doesn’t turn to look and the sound of a car whirring by fills the silence instead. Gliding under the streetlights, it seems to negate any room for recourse.  There’s a rhythm to conversation, a spot for each word and thought and question — and any space left for Mysterion to ask him what he’d been about to say is gone. Kyle should be glad. 

When Mysterion does speak, after exactly twelves steps of his boots on wet pavement, it’s non-committal. Casual.

“You’ve really been to R'lyeh?” 

“Is it that hard to believe?”

“Most people think it was a conspiracy. Cathulhu, I mean.”

Kyle shrugs. “Yeah a gigantic monster from another dimension nearly destroys the world and everyone thinks it was planet-wide hallucination. Sounds like my life, dude.”

“Where _are_ you from?” Mysterion asks after a few paces of quiet.

Kyle wonders where they’re going exactly, and if they should really be out in the open, but he keeps following. “Where are _you_ from?”

“You know I’m not going to tell you.”

“So mysterious,” Kyle says, rolling his eyes for effect. “I’m from South Park. It’s a small town outside of Denver.” 

Blue eyes look down at him. The guy’s pretty tall. He blocks out the light from a passing lamp as they walk by. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Huh.” Kyle looks away, across the street at a house with no lights on. “We were on the news a lot.”

“I didn’t watch tv much.”  His voice sounds distracted. When Kyle looks back at him, Mysterion is scanning the street. His hand reaches over and grabs Kyle’s wrist. “This way.”

He leads them three houses down the suburban street, each home a mini-mansion with nice cars Kyle can’t name and large looming black-glass windows. They stop in front of number 1886, a house Kyle feels like he should call a _chateau_ or  _palacio_ from its size and expensive siding, finishes, and window frames. It’s black with a metal roof. The lights are on. 

“This is it,” Kyle says, looking at the civic number.

Mysterion nods and places a finger over his cowl, hushing him. Kyle nods back. He follows him towards a BMW parked on the by-street, facing the house, and nearly succumbs to an angina attack when Mysterion reaches for the car door.

“What are you _doing_?”

“Spying,” he says, holding the door handle. “Relax.” 

Violet mist trails from between his fingers, seeping into the car until the lock pops.

Kyle takes a breath, pretends to be unimpressed and says, “You can’t pick it?” Mysterion turns to look at him, hand still on the car door. “It just seems like cheating, using your powers,” Kyle says, and lets a small smirk spread slowly over his lips.

The hero shakes his head and looks away, climbing into the BMW. He sits on the passenger's side. Kyle slides in next to him and closes the door.

“I can pick locks,” Mysterion says, “But it’s loud and can take awhile.”

Kyle smiles. “I was just fucking with you.”

“Oh, I know.” The hero reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small camera.

“So what’s the plan here?” Kyle asks. “If he has a student in there and starts―” he waves a hand around, “you know. How are we gonna stop it?”

Mysterion clips the camera to the dash and turns it on. “I’ll break the window and grab her. You take the camera and run.”

Kyle snorts. “You’ve really put a lot of thought into this.”

  
“You have a better idea?”

 

* * *

 

Forty-three minutes pass by without incident. Kyle’s thankful, of course, but he’s hoping to stop this asshole sooner rather than later.

“So are you gonna tell me where you learned to beat people with a bat?” Mysterion asks, breaking the silence between them. “And why my superpowers seem totally normal to you?”

“Are you going to tell me anything about yourself?” Kyle raises an eyebrow but keeps his gaze out the windshield, eyes on Valganhorn’s front window.

“Depends.” Mysterion’s smirking. Kyle can hear it in his voice. “Are you really a Jewish spy working for Cathulhu?” 

Kyle would throw something at him if there was anything around to throw. “One of those things is true, yes.” He stuffs his hands in the pocket of his sweater, feeling a little cold. “My hometown was a weird place. Weird shit happened everyday.”

“Like what?” 

“Well aside from Cathulhu, my friend Craig turned out to be the resurrected leader of an ancient Peruvian pan flute... cult, thing. We got lost in a Peruvian jungle for three days trying to convince him to save the world.” Kyle shrugs. “He’s kind of unmotivated.” 

“Okay…”

“Giant guinea pigs took over the town. Like blood-thirsty flesh eating ones.” He doesn’t see anything happening in Valganhorn’s front window. Just a boring beige living room with the lights on. “I forget how we got rid of them. Giant Mongooses?” 

“That makes sense,” Mysterion says.

“I guess.” Some memories from South Park are like a fever dream to Kyle. “Maybe it never happened. It could’ve been a game we played. I’m never sure. Have you ever heard of magical realism?”

Mysterion nods. “In general, sure.”

“I think that’s been my whole life, until I got out of there anyway.” Kyle sets the side of his head against the cool pane of the passenger window. “I really don’t know what parts are real.” Some of the shit that went on was just too fucked up to be true. 

“I have a friend like that,” the other boy says, “Who’s never sure what’s real.”

“What’s his name?” 

“T—” Mysterion frowns at him. “Don’t do that.” 

Kyle grins. “Sorry dude.” He’s not at all. “What can I ask that you’ll actually answer?” Kyle pauses to think. A car drives down the damp street behind them, lights casting long reflections around their dark-shrouded eyes and its engine droning on and on down the road. “How old are you?” 

“Twenty-three.” 

“Same age! Cool. Are you a student?” Mysterion frowns again. “Come on there are like five- _thousand._ It doesn’t really narrow it down.”

“Okay. Yes, sort of,” the hero says. Kyle looks over at him finally, head still resting on the side window, and Mysterion explains. “I can’t afford the tuition, so I’m taking one class for now.” 

“Yeah… The only reason I’m here is a scholarship.” A large black cat runs across Valganhorn’s front lawn, drawing both of their eyes to it. “Though I would’ve committed acts of cannibalism to get out of South Park. Leaving that city was all me.” 

“You really hated it there.” 

“It’s a fucked up place.” Kyle absently watches the cat dash behind a rose bush. “Dating anyone?” he asks, looking carefully back towards the front window. 

“No,” Mysterion says. “You?”

“Just my law textbooks.”

“You’re taking law?” Kyle nods at the question. “That’s a little surprising.”

“Why?”

“Because you came at me with a baseball bat.” Mysterion tilts his head, only slightly, enough to add emphasis. “You keep said baseball bat in your room.” He counts two strikes on his fingers and adds a third as he says, “ _And_ you knew how to use it.” Kyle lifts his eyes from the windshield and looks at him. The inside of the BMW feels too small.  “And now you’re telling me you’re from a nightmare town of magical realism. Law just doesn't seem to fit.”

Kyle's never talked to someone about South Park who isn’t from South Park. All the fuckery, death, and mayhem stays stagnant in his brain. Who would believe him? Seven-hundred miles from his hometown he wonders if he should believe himself. What's more likely, that crab people ever took over his home or that he's just crazy? Maybe this guy next to him isn't real. It's three in the morning and no one else is around. After everything, maybe Kyle's head has finally snapped and spat this caped weirdo out as a symptom. 

That must be why the next thing he says comes out of his mouth, unbidden and crawling up the back of his throat. “I hate it.”

Mysterion’s knee bumps his. He _feels_ real, doesn’t seem any part imaginary or a phantasm born from lifelong trauma.  

“Then why are you taking it?”

More words crawl out, feeling like small insects creeping up his throat. He swallows them back down but there’s no saliva left in his mouth and it only hurts. “Do you ever feel like you don't have a choice? Like your life is already planned, and you can't…” He's been thinking about dying and he doesn't know how he’s supposed to say that. _Do you ever think about death and realize it's the end, the real end, and it doesn’t matter what happens in the middle, and how that makes it easier to just do whatever everyone tells you?_ “It's what my parents think I should do and I don't really have anything else.”

The knee presses in against his own and Kyle can hear explosions somewhere far away. “It's gonna sound like bullshit,” Mysterion says, “but at least your parents expect something of you.”

“Yours don't, I take it.”

He shrugs. “They don't give crap.” Kyle wants to look down at the knee pressing into his own but he doesn’t move, afraid it might stop if he did. “If you hate law you should stop studying it.”

Kyle doesn't say he doesn't know how. “Do they know you do this?” He asks instead. 

Mysterion laughs. “No. When I was a kid though, I used to pop up in their window at night to tell them to be better parents. It worked, sort of. They stopped hitting each other everyday.” His smile widens, but it’s empty and hurt. “They still smoked crack.”

“Jesus.”

“You escaped your town, I escaped my parents.” Mysterion sighs. “Thank fuck.”

Kyle wonders what his mouth looks like under the cowl and feels sick because that’s where his head had gone, right after he's been told something intimate and sad. He turns away to look out the front windshield again. The lights are still on in the living room but nothing’s happening. He turns to his left again, looking out the passenger window. The night glares back at him, empty and dark all the way to the top of the sky, and Kyle can feel vines growing, crawling up around his shoulders when Mysterion speaks. 

“You okay?”

“Fine,” he says. 

“You sure?”

The vines twist tighter. “I was kind of an ass to someone today.”  Sunflowers as big as the moon sink themselves along his spine, roots cracking deep through his bones. “I guess I can’t stop thinking about it.” 

They don’t find anything that night.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Accounting Principles: A Business Perspective: James D. Edwards (University of Georgia), Michael W. Maher (University of California at Davis), Roger H. Hermanson (Georgia State University).


	5. take a breath my heart and hold your tongue

   
  


* * *

   
  


The next afternoon, Kyle’s still ruminating over the big heap of nothing they’d gotten from sitting in a BMW for three hours. More than likely Mysterion will just go out again without him, now that he knows professor Valganhorn’s address. He doesn’t like the idea of anyone seeing him as a liability, as someone who’d get in the way, get hurt and need to be saved; he’s been through enough to know how to handle himself. There’s nothing he can do about it, though. The self-proclaimed superhero has the address and no use for Kyle anymore.

“So this is the perch you hide on.”

He looks up from his textbook, _Fundamentals of International Naval Law_ , and sees Kenny McCormick looming lankily over him. The morning’s sunlight hangs a halo around the back of his blond head. The grin in his teeth and the spark in the grey eyes negate any sort of purity.

“Lord of the Library,” Kenny says, bowing slightly and holding a paper coffee cup, “I bring you a peace offering, in the form of leaves and hot water.”

Kyle snorts. “Lord of the Library?”

“A commoner such as myself cannot address _His Lordship_ before the offering is accepted.” 

Kyle takes the tea, smiling without meaning to. He drops the smile when Kenny lifts his head from the bow. 

“Does the offering please _His Lordship_?”

“Do you need something?” Kyle asks. Kenny shakes his head and Kyle’s left watching with wide eyes as he crashes down next to him on the couch. “Okay... guess you’re staying.”

“Whatcha studying?”

Kyle looks down at the textbook lying open on his lap. “Naval Law,” he says, flipping it to the cover to show him.

“You know, I thought about it...” Kenny stretches his long legs out. “And law makes sense. You’re definitely lawful good.”

Kyle frowns at him.

“Am I wrong?”

“What do you _want_?” 

“An island off the coast of San Feliu, six joints, and about ten thousand dollars in a cash.” 

“Is that all.”

Kenny winks. “Maybe someone cute to come with me.”

Kyle watches him with disdain, but not the kind from real annoyance. Guilt sinks into his gut. It cuts just like the vines and the flowers and that faux-halo of light.

“You’ll have to ask someone, then,” he says, opening his text book again. He takes a slow drink of the tea. Peppermint, of course.

Kenny bends to face him, his long body shifting the cushions under them. “Seriously, though.” 

“Seriously though what?” 

“Naval Law? Must be complicated.”

“I guess.”

Silence then. Flowers still bloom, all along Kyle’s legs and across the floor between them, surging towards a larger pair of feet. He’d seen them all last night, a dream-like image of what he needs to say.

“You’re not wearing shoes,” Kyle says.

“I’m painting.” 

He looks back up at grey eyes. If there’s a correlation between painting and a lack of footwear, Kyle doesn’t know it.

“Anyway,” Kenny starts, the one word weaker than the rest he’d spoken. Soft. “Look, I know I’m the campus freak or whatever, but would you―”

“Kyle!” Craig Tucker’s voice makes him jump about fifty feet straight up. Kyle hadn’t seen or heard him coming, but Craig would’ve had to walk directly up the stairs and across the atrium; there’s no way to sneak around up here.

Kyle finds himself swallowing something down. “What’s up?” 

“Move your ass over,” he snaps, snarling at Kenny who doesn’t budge an inch. 

Kyle rolls his eyes and moves himself closer to Kenny to make room for his friend.

Craig crashes down like a hailstorm, frigid, heavy, and singularly bitter.  

“Your fucking mother called,” he says, arms hugged tight into his chest. Craig Tucker doesn’t fold his arms so much as lock himself down behind them. “With _my_ fucking father in the fuckin goddamn room.” He glares at the white carpeted floor that lines the atrium. The sun pricks the tips of his ears, highlighting his darker skin. 

Craig jabs a thumb in Kenny’s direction. “Who the hell is this?”

Kenny grins wide. He seems to get a kick out of pissing people off, as far as Kyle can tell.

“Kenny McCormick,” he says, holding a hand out. 

Craig shakes it. “The Slut of Sigma?”

Vines coil around Kyle’s feet. The flowers bite down, organic and raw tendrils like teeth made of flesh.

 _I’m sorry for being a huge slut an——_  

Kenny’s grin slips into a smirk. “That’s me.”

Craig looks at Kyle, who looks out the large windows lining the wall of the library. The sun blinds his eyes as Kyle says, “What’d they want?”

“Your mother wants you home for Hanukkah. Ask your profs for the time off, she said.” Craig shuts his eyes in irritation for a moment. Lines crease the corners of his mouth. “You can guess what my father wants.” Kenny looks at him blankly. Craig must be feeling desperate or generous (maybe sad?), because he bothers to fill him in. “ _Heterosexuality_.” 

Kenny’s eyebrows raise. “Ah.”

Kyle rolls his eyes for what feels like the fiftieth time in the last twenty minutes. “Don’t let him get to you.”

“That’s what you always say, Broflovski.” 

“Yeah.”

Kenny studies Craig up and down for a moment, before seeming to become completely uninterested and pulling out his phone. His fingers are spotted with paint stains, blue and silver and black.

“Did he ask about the writing?” Kyle says, trying to block out the sound of Kenny tapping away at his phone screen.

“Fucking of course not. He reminded me of the desk jobs waiting for me in South Park. Accounting. Human Services. It wasn’t anything new, I’m just tired of it.”

“I know.” Kyle rubs at his own neck. It’s been sore, lately. “Did he really get on your case about the gay thing?” 

“‘The gay thing,’” Craig mocks.

Kyle shrugs. “What do you want me to call it?” 

“I don’t know, maybe _not_ something a ten year old would?”

“Fine.” Kyle drops his hands to his lap, leaning back against the couch. The dark cushions behind him are warm. He feels Kenny shifting on his left. “Did he ask you about your predilection for having guys’ dicks up your ass.”

“That’s exactly what we would’ve called it when we were ten.”

Kyle glares at him. “ _Dude_ , whatever.”

“You two bicker like a couple of old men,” Kenny says, stuffing his phone back into his pocket.

Craig scrunches his face up in its typical stance of absolute disapproval and disgust. At being called old, a grandpa, or being somehow paired with Kyle _—_ Kyle isn’t sure. 

“You got something to say, slut-Sigma?”

That’s the name that goes around campus, slut-Sigma. Kenny doesn’t seem bothered by it. Kyle watches the corners of his mouth and eyes for any kind of reaction, but he only laughs softly. 

The vines dig into his legs anyway.

“Lots,” he says, spreading his hands out over his boney knees, “But I’m not sure you’ll get it.”

“What?” Craig looks at him like he’d just yanked the entire continent of Eurasia out of his ass. “The fuck kind of cryptic bullshit was that?” It’s an improvement for Craig; a year ago he wouldn’t have cared enough to wonder.

Kyle had noticed a blond boy walking over to them a while ago. He’s not very tall, kind of messy looking between the spidery hair and the lopsided t-shirt covered in paint; and the impossible to miss fact that his left shoulder twitches like its got something important it wants to say. There’s something that reverberates off him. A feeling or an aura. He’s walking chaos, Kyle thinks to himself, the sort of person he wouldn’t want to be around very much. The kind that makes you remember oblivion.

Or maybe his head’s just in a weird place, lately. 

Craig evidently hadn’t noticed him, not until he speaks.

“Uhhh...” The messy-blond manages, tugging at his hair for a moment. He drops his hands but the frantic twitch remains.

“Hey, Tweek,” Kenny says, waving lazily. 

“Hi.” He doesn’t say anything more, only waits like he’s expecting something from Kenny.  After a moment he frowns. “Any reason you asked me to come up here?”

“No. Just wanted you to come get me.”

Tweek rolls his eyes. Kyle feels immediately like he can relate.

“Stop bothering these people. Let’s go.” 

“Hold on.”

“No.” Tweek tugs at Kenny’s sweater, trying to pull him to his feet. Kenny for whatever reason — Kyle’s given up trying to guess — has a shit-eating grin plastered over his face. It’s the most obnoxious thing Kyle thinks he’s ever seen.

Once he’s up, Tweek looks at Kyle and Craig. “Sorry,” he says, “we don’t normally let him leave the basement. I don’t know how he got out.” After what looks like a painful twitch he manages a smile.

Kyle snorts.

“Come on.” He nudges Kenny in the back to get him moving. “You’ve got a canvas to paint and I’ve got a wad of clay to turn into a canary.”

“What is it with you and birds?” 

Tweek rolls his eyes. He tugs on Kenny’s arm as he says, “Up.”

Kenny leaves, and it feels like a tree uprooting itself beside Kyle. He watches the sun fall back into place behind his head. There are vines snapping in half all along his arms, the sunflowers from last night breaking apart. Kyle should’ve said something. Even an out of place ‘I’m sorry’ would’ve been better than this guilt turning into all these fucking flowers.

“I’ll see you guys around,” Kenny says, and walks off with his friend.

Kyle watches him leave.   

 


	6. dirty mind, dirty mouth, pretty little head

 

 

* * *

 

After studying is work again, and by the time the library’s closing Kyle’s had enough of the flowers growing up his back. It’s not that hard to apologize. To explain. It’s two words. He’s tired of the metaphor, anyway.

He turns his work computer off and pushes away from the desk, feeling his heart rate speed up.

There’s a small room hidden under the library that most students at UIV don’t know about. As far as Kyle understands it (that is, as far as Craig explained it) the Arts and Fine Arts students go down there to get high and paint in secret and generally be edgy post-modernists or anarchists or whatever the hell counter-culture term they call themselves.

It’s affectionately known at ‘the Basement.’ Based on his constant encounters with him in the library, Kyle can only assume that’s where Kenny McCormick goes to paint.

He shuffles behind the small coffee shop, a space just big enough to squeeze through, crouches down through a square opening, and steps down onto a set of stairs. He’s been down here before once, when Craig had been invited for the first time. He’d wanted Kyle there incase they tried to ‘take his organs or something.’

It smells mostly like paint and mould, the further down he goes. It smells old, it smells wet, and it smells faintly of violets, and Kyle thinks the lights turn purple with each step he takes. He takes the last one which creeks with years of familiar use and gradual decay. Around a sharp corner, walls covered in scuffs of paint and a poster of some local band from 1999, there’s messy blond hair. Kyle knows it now, that hair, the long neck, and he knows it different from others.

“Hey,” Kyle says, immediately feeling awkward in a room flooded with half-done sculptures, reeds of hanging paintings, and smudged charcoal marks all the way up to the ceiling. He feels metaphorically like a weed in the garden of Eden. Literally, he feels like a law student surrounded by art.

“Uh…”

The faint slip of air that Kyle feels sneaking out of him — watching Kenny watching him with eyes wider than oceans — makes his heart hike up even faster. 

“Hi,” a too-long pause from Kenny, “What's up?”

Kyle’s shoulders constrict. He presses his fingers into his palms and they’re wet. The whole room springs up in a flood of roses and thorned vines and bright tropical flowers he can’t name, fat petals and fuzzy anthers spilling pollen and filling his nostrils. He takes a slow breath of it. It’s harder to breathe, between the pollen and the hot haze, but he wonders if that’s a bad thing anymore.

“It’s…” Taking a few steps further into the room, beds of leaves crush under Kyle’s shoes. Stomping on them feels better than ignoring them.

“It’s just a bunch of rumours,” he says, watching Kenny’s ears twitch and how his face goes a little red. “I don’t really know you at all.”

Kenny looks at him carefully. Or he's pissed. Kyle can't tell. His eye scrunch up around the corners and his mouth is pulled shut tight. 

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Kyle says, too fast, an awkward lump balling in his trachea. But the flowers wither and melt away. He blinks his mind clear of the metaphor he's not sure the source of. Does Kenny smell like flowers? Is it the bright, sun-set hair? Blue eyes? Something about a rainforest at dawn. How real could they be? “I should've said so, before.” 

Kenny's lips part in a slow snap and bright white crooked teeth gleam up at him, the gap between the front two pulling Kyle’s eyes in. The lump in his throat rolls in a heavy heap.

“Like I give a fuck what you think,” Kenny says finally, grin growing wider and wider.


	7. as in the middle of the street—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for needles and blood.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Kyle's curled up with hot earl gray and _Future Functions of Algorithms in Business Technology_ in his lap, trying to study under the sounds of a group of people partying in the room above him. The music's loud and exciting, a song he thinks he probably knows from Stan playing it over their online chat, and the partiers are stomping on the floor like a pack of velociraptors waiting impatiently for a meal. It's already shitty enough to be studying for his business course on a Saturday night — the option of a More Fun Thing To Do isn't helping. 

He sinks further down into his bed, his back against the wall. Kyle watches the curtains (Craig had put them up in his room) swaying in the wind and wonders how Mysterion's doing — where is he and, more than anything, if he's okay. It's not like the guy gave Kyle any way to contact him or fucking anything. 

As he's thinking — absolutely not studying like he should be — Kyle starts to notice a sound that's different from the base and echoing and stomping above. 

It's been there for awhile, he thinks, droaning in the background, almost nagging, and he's only now catching on. Kyle flops his book along the bed and walks three long strides over to the window. 

The sight of violet fabric waving in dark wind has his chest carefully un-constricting, relaxing, his heart slowing, something warm and familiar present in his boring day. Kyle opens the window, sarcastic sling ready at his mouth.

Mysterion comes spilling into the bedroom. He folds like a heap of laundry down the side of the wall, and smashes face-first into the floor. There’s a crunch. _His nose,_ Kyle thinks while his stomach turns. 

Kyle falls to the floor with him. “Fuck—” 

Mysterion tries to push himself up, tries to pull his tangled long limbs away from the wall. Kyle catches his arms and tugs gently, saying with a shaking voice, “What the hell ha- hap...” He trails off into nothing, his eyes full of the bright-red blood steadily swarming around them like a slow-moving mass of ants. 

Lying on his back, Mysterion looks up at Kyle and his mouth opens, trying to shape a word. His eyes unfocus and there’s something missing about them. They’re not their normal colour. Kyle’s pretty sure they’re violet, but his head races too quick for him to care. 

“No no no,”  he says, lifting a hand to set it on Mysterion’s forehead. “You stay awake.” It’s shaking — his whole arm — quivering like dying leaves in violent wind. Kyle feels blood soaking through his sweatpants to his knees. It’s cold. 

He doesn’t panic. He won’t. He knows enough, has done enough, that he knows panicking is always useless. 

There aren’t any cuts on Mysterion’s front. The blood is pooling from behind him. Kyle rolls him carefully on his side, facing the wall. 

In the centre of his back, right through thoracic vertebrae, there’s a hole. It’s filled with tar-black blood, running thick enough for Kyle to watch it pour out of him and onto the linoleum. 

Kyle takes a deep breath that vibrates just as weakly as his arm had. “I’m going to roll you on to your stomach.” Mysterion blinks blearily. Fuck knows if he can hear Kyle or not — he’s not going to stop and check. He rolls the hero over.

Mysterion groans. 

“I know, I know,” Kyle says so softly he barely hears himself. 

Gunked-up blood pours out over Mysterion’s back, down his sides and onto the floor. It comes out in pulsed-waves. Kyle’s covered from knee to toe already. 

The hole in Mysterion’s back isn’t normal. There’s no cut marks, or jagged skin that’s been torn open. There’s only a perfectly circular hole. 

There’s one person he can think of who might know what to do. He’s calling her before he realizes it. 

“Who the fuck is this.”

“Henrietta— It’s Kyle.” 

“Oh,” she says it like she’s telling him to fuck directly off. “Well. What.” 

He runs a hand through the little tuffs of blond hair that stick out around Mysterion’s ears. “I think my friend’s cursed. Or something. I don’t know what to d-” 

Henrietta sighs. “Symptoms?” 

“He’s bleeding-”

“Not helpful.”

 _Fuck_. Kyle squeezes the phone in his hand. “He’s bleeding a lot. There’s gotta be enough blood for six people. It’s coming from a hole in his back, but there’s no actual wound. It’s just a hole.” 

“What colour?” 

“Bright red on the floor where it’s thin, black on his back.” 

“Possession.” 

Kyle almost jumps. “What?” 

“He’s got Possession Sickness. Something possessed him and left.”

Kyle feels hollowed out. “What?” 

“Not repeating myself.” 

“Is he dying? How do I stop the bleeding? What do I _do_?” 

She hums in thought and then says, “He’s on a one-way trip to Hell, and you can’t stop the bleeding.” 

“What the _fuck_ _do I do_?” His voice cracks and breaks apart like dry earth in a barren desert. His throat scratches. _Don't panic, it won't help-_

“He needs clean blood. Non-possessed, I mean. None of that virgin bullshit. Like the fucking devil cares if someone’s fucked or not.” 

Blood works its way between his toes and Kyle’s head goes hot with worry. Nausea sprouts like weeds along his stomach lining. “You mean like— like a blood transfusion?” 

“That’s exactly what I mean.” 

Suddenly the room seems huge. Everything feels far away. How the hell is Kyle supposed to do that? What kind of equipment does he need and where does he get it? There’s that tube thing and — needles? One on each end? Isn’t there a pump too? 

“How-” 

“Not my problem.” Henrietta scoffs. “You’re the smart one, remember? Figure it out.” A pause where he expects to be hung up on, but then Henri continues. “Oh but,” she takes a long breath in, probably to smoke, “if someone your friend really likes is around, you know family, an S.O., hell even a fucking pet — their blood is better. Works faster.” An exhale. “Might kill a guinea pig though, if it’s Craig.” 

The line goes dead. 

The hospital is Kyle’s first thought. Fuck secret identities and all this bullshit — he just needs to convince the nurses to do a transfusion. 

It wont work. He knows it in a second. Hospitals had never worked in South Park. Why would supernatural shit outside of his small town be any different? No matter what it seemed like, his hometown doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And Mysterion had said he’d gotten his powers from R’lyeh; a hospital would be useless against whatever this shit is. 

“I need you to get up,” Kyle says, digging his fingers into Mysterion’s arm. “I think we can get what we need from the labs in the basement of X Hall, but I can’t get us in there, and I can’t carry you.” There’s also the probability of someone noticing him carrying an unconscious body to the basement of the school’s medical labs at three in the morning. 

“Mysterion.”  He leans down close, tugging at his sleeve.  “You have to get us there.” 

Nothing. 

A dull breeze drones past the open window and into his room. He can hear Craig in their shared tiny kitchen banging pots around at one in the morning, but he can’t ask him for help. Craig wouldn’t believe him. He rarely had when they were kids, and Kyle doesn’t have time to deal with any bullshit. But what the hell is he supposed to do? How do transfusions work? The med labs are across campus, the doors to the building are locked and he’s sure the doors to the labs are too. There are security cams, he can’t— 

“Okay, calm down,” Kyle tells himself, blood dripping from his elbows as he scratches at the back of his head. “What _can_ you do.” He looks down at the hero.  “Can’t carry Mysterion, so you have to bring the stuff here.” He looks at the blood all around the floor, his reflection shining clearly back at him. “You have to get into the labs.”

That weird band poster from 1999 pops into his head like a punch in the face. Following it is all the art and an awkward apology he’d made about a week ago to a guy he barely knows. 

If there’s a secret basement hangout under the library’s cafe— why was it built, and what might it be connected to? 

“I’ll be right back,” Kyle says, breathless, standing before he knows it. Standing still covered in blood. Standing with his heart ready to fall out of his chest and stay here. “Just- keep fucking breathing.” 

Kyle hangs a hand on the windowsill and launches himself over Mysterion and the window, out into the night. 

On the grass, he heads towards the library. Walking around campus at 1am isn’t that weird, so Kyle doesn’t worry about it and just tries to move at a pace that doesn’t say ‘holyshit someone’s dying’ so as not to draw attention to his blood-soaked self.

He knows the code to the library’s side-door and sneaks in. He squeezes himself between the café and the wall and heads downstairs. He’s not sure why— why he’d come here, why it was his first thought, why the certainty. 

But he rounds the same corner Kenny McCormick had been painting next to and it expands effortlessly into a long hallway. Kyle draws a map in his head and, if there’s a section that branches left, that’d be towards the med labs.

He runs down the hall, the floor and ceiling deteriorating as he goes. It’s clearly old and decomposing. Underground tunnels that students used to be able to use, he guesses. Maybe for the winter? He wonders why - vaguely as he ducks running under a fallen ceiling panel - they closed them off and stopped upkeep. 

A set of stairs brings him up to the main floor. The exit is walled in. Kyle wishes he’d brought his bat, but he kicks at the drywall and it breaks open in pieces. He steps into the first-floor hall of the medical building, gyprock crumbling down through his hair. 

Kyle slips his phone from his pocket and, panting as he runs towards the labs, types ‘how blood transfusion’ into his browser. 

He reads a few paragraphs about blood-typing and cross-checking and decides — hopes — none of that matters because of supernatural bullshit. Basically: use a tube with a needle to poke a hole, other end is supposed to go into an IV bag; Kyle’s going to shove that end into his arm and pray to fuck that works. Unless he can find a bag to drain his blood into.

He enters one of the labs, rifles through sixteen cupboards, leaving things as to close neat as he can without slowing himself down. He finds a silicone tube, fuck knows what it’s for, and two needles. He grips them in his hand and then he runs, heart hammering too hard against his bones. What the fuck is he doing? He doesn’t know how to do this- Doesn’t he need to sterilize something?

Shoving the tube and needles into his sweater pocket, Kyle races out of the room, back down the hall, inside the wall and down through to the library’s basement again. He runs all the way back across campus — fuck if anyone sees him at this point — he’s been gone at least twenty minutes and Mysterion might have otherworldly superpowers but no one can bleed forever and keep living — and he’d been barely breathing when Kyle had left him there, alone, dying on his bedroom floor-

He slips back inside the window, panting, careful to step over the hero. Kyle falls to his knees in a rush feeling lifeless inside his own body. With shaking hand he takes the needles from his pocket and the flimsy silicone tube. Blood leaks from the floor through his sweatpants again, re-wetting the stains that had dried as he’d run across campus. It’s a bright violet now, the blood at his knees, and it’s crawling all along his bedroom floor. Kyle blinks something dark out of his eyes. 

Gently, fingers feeling fragile against gaunt and cooling skin, Kyle lifts Mysterion up. 

He sets the hero’s back against the wall under the window and moves in closer, not asking himself for a purpose in the action. He’s afraid and alone, and that’s enough. 

He pinches where the internet had told him the right vein is in his arm, swallows thickly and stabs the needle in. It goes in easy. It makes him feel sick. Kyle breaks off the plastic end of the needle and slips the tube over the piece stuck into his arm. He massages the needle until his own blood starts pumping down the line. 

He takes Mysterion’s arm, heavy with weight from awaiting death (he’s read that somewhere, one of Craig’s literature books, _heavy with the weight of awaiting death_ ). Kyle sets the other needle on the opposite end of the tube and waits for his blood to fill it. No air bubbles, right? Those kill. Once the tube is full, he slides the needle into Mysterion’s arm, blood bulging out over the sides of the needle. Kyle holds his arm up and sets it over Mysterion’s shoulder; it needs to be elevated for this to work. 

“Go,” Kyle hears himself beg into the empty room, the word carried out the window and into the lightless sky. “Fucking _work._ ” He shakes his arm where it's slung over Mysterion’s shoulder. He waits, holds his breath, tries to hurry his heartbeat but he doesn’t know if that would help — and finally, gradual as a creeping fog, the flow starts. The tube-line tightens and he watches his blood move out from himself and into the hero. 

“Holy- _shit_ ——” Kyle looks away from the transfusion line he’d made out of the internet and dumb fucking luck. He feels nauseous immediately, and could do without adding vomit to all this blood. 

An impossibly slow forty-three minutes go by before Kyle thinks it might be working. 

Mysterion stops bleeding, and his skin starts to warm up. He isn’t waking up though so Kyle doesn’t move. He’d pulled himself between two endlessly long outstretched legs, tucked himself near his chest, arm still propped up on the hero's shoulder. 

Another thirty minutes go by, and Mysterion’s eyes blink open to Kyle’s small bedroom. 

He has enough grace to wait until his gaze focuses before Kyle glares hard and says, “ _Dude._  What the hell!” 

“Kyle?” He asks like he’s fucking confused about it. 

“Yes, Kyle! Hello! What the _fuck_ happened?” 

“Uh.”

“‘Uh’?” Kyle tries his best not to flail around, worried he might be hurt. “You fell into my bedroom at one in the morning with a giant fucking hole through your back and your only answer is fucking—— ‘uh’????” 

He gestures to the makeshift blood transfusion he’s got between them. 

“I’m literally giving you my blood. I made a fucking transfusion- device - thingy. And am I dizzy? _Yes_. And I want you to know I didn’t look at who you are under all that! You’ve been out for more than _two_ _hours_.” He pokes Mysterion hard in the chest. “And I did _not_ _look_! So caped-and-fucking-cowled wonder, start talking because I thought-”

Kyle stops, words caught up in a ball at the back of his throat. He can feel Mysterion's chest where it's pressed against his shoulder, warm and solid. Breathing out out slowly through his nose, he tries again.

“Because I thought you were gonna die. I called a friend and she said……” Kyle’s running out of breath. He doesn’t know how much blood’s okay to give away, but he thinks he might have crossed the line. “...you were possessed.” He sets a hand on his forehead, vision hazy. “What happened?” 

Full-light comes back to Mysterion’s eyes slowly then, and soon after his face contorts to shock. “Blood transfus-” He drops his eyes to the tube between them. Without a pause or warning he pinches the middle and with quiet, quick urgency he pulls the needle out of Kyle’s arm. It pinches a little but Kyle barely notices. 

“You’ve lost too much blood,” Mysterion says. Kyle thinks _that’s_ rich coming from a guy sitting in a pool of his own, but when he tries to say so nothing comes out of his mouth. “You need to lie down. And ea-” 

“ _Oh_ no.” Kyle shakes his head. “Nu huh. No. Talk.” He pokes Mysterion hard in the chest again, right in the middle of that goddamn purple M. “Possession — this whole time, or just for a hot minute tonight? Does this have anything to do with Valganhorn?” Kyle presses the fingers in harder; it’s easy to reach from between Mysterion’s bent legs. 

The hero caves surprisingly easily. Maybe he feels guilty, or maybe he's just as freaked out. “Yes, I was possessed, but just tonight. I think… I don’t know if it has anything to do with Valganhorn. I wasn’t anywhere near him.” 

“Where were you?”

Mysterion is absolutely silent.

Kyle squints at him. “Where were you?” He asks again, this time with more force. 

“Just… Around campus, I guess,” Mysterion says. Kyle leans in closer to his face, still giving him the stare-down even though he has to look up at the hero. Mysterion stiffens around the shoulders. “Fine. I was on the roof. Here. I thought I should keep watch of the main courtyard, and the top of your dorm has a good view.” 

Kyle sees it for the half-truth it is. Leviathan has a direct view of the courtyard, but so do a lot of other buildings on campus. He feels his face go warm. 

“Oh.” 

Mysterion’s eyes flicker away to stare at the wall, splattered near its edges with violet blood. They’re sitting so close it barely matters; Kyle’s still in his line of view. 

“I’m sorry if that’s weird,” he says, his normally-rough voice turning more melodic. “If you got hurt, it would be my fault. I wasn’t— you know.”

“What?”

“Watching you, or anything fucked like that.” 

Kyle glares at him, and it seems to draw Mysterion’s gaze back. “Dude,” he says, “My head didn’t even go there. What the hell.”

“Sorry.” Mysterion shrugs. “I thought it might.”

“You’re acting weird.”

“I got possessed,” he says with another shrug.

“And bled all over my floor.” Kyle shifts, pulling himself away a few inches. He smells like sunflowers and rainwater and it’s- “So, what? A ghost popped up and took over your body? Why?” 

“Not a ghost. A demon.” Mysterion’s hands curl into fists against the faux-hardwood. His fingers are long, and Kyle’s pretty sure he hears knuckles crack under the spandex. “It came in, knocked me out, and it must’ve left a few hours later. It takes a few hours of possession for sickness to set in.” He shuts his eyes. “I don’t know why. I know a bit about R’lyeh and its monsters, but I know shit about Hell.”

“That doesn’t seem very smart,” Kyle says, feeling tension leave his shoulders, watching as Mysterion opens his eyes again, “since you’re supernatural.” 

“Blood-loss makes you kinda snarky, huh.” Mysterion raises an eyebrow at him. Kyle smiles a little in return. The hero sighs and says, “There’s nothing written about these places. Nothing right, anyway. You have to actually go, and I’ve only been to R’lyeh.” 

Kyle takes a moment to process. Is going to Hell different from dying? How does Henrietta know all this shit about the underworld if she’s never died? He squints, feels his brain flop over in exhaustion, and decides he’ll figure it out later. When he has more blood. For now, at least no one’s dead _or_ in Hell. 

“I have a friend who could really help you out with that,” Kyle says. “But her help always comes with a price.” He gestures to his own body, clothes soaked with blood, and then the rest of the floor. 

Mysterion laughs, just once. Through the fabric over his mouth Kyle can feel the puff of warm air. “Actually, since it’s not from this world, it’ll fade.” 

“Really?” 

“It’ll be gone by the time you wake up.” 

“That’s… convenient.” He frowns at the mess all around them. “Can you get up?” Kyle asks. 

Mysterion snorts. “Can you?” 

Kyle tries to lift himself through his knees, but the muscles won't constrict. It reminds him of when he first wakes up in the morning and can’t make a tight fist. His brain flops again. 

“Okay,” Mysterion says. He pulls his legs back away from Kyle’s sides and under himself, shifting his centre of gravity.  Moving Kyle’s arms out of the way, Mysterion slides his own almost too-slow along Kyle’s waist.

“Dude- what are you doing?” 

Mysterion stands, pulling Kyle up with him. The world goes near-white with brightness and Kyle feels himself starting to fall over. 

He’s held up. 

Mysterion guides him over to his bed. Kyle blinks until the room is back to normal, dark except for the stream of light from a lamp outside. 

“I can’t go to sleep like this.” 

“You can’t wash the blood out. It’s not really even here.”

“What the fuck _._ ” 

Mysterion pushes gently on his shoulder to get Kyle to sit on his bed. Kyle latches onto his cape from both ends and pulls Mysterion down with him, not asking himself why though he knows the answer like he knows his own heartbeat alone late at night and the fear it invites. 

The hero rights himself enough to crash down beside Kyle. He makes a surprised grunting noise which doesn’t fit his ‘hero persona’ at all and has Kyle laughing in seconds. 

He laughs until he can’t anymore, Mysterion sat beside him and frowning.

“Very mature.” 

Kyle grins wide and shrugs at the hero. “Consider it payback. You scared the crap out of me, man.”  He wonders what would’ve happened if Mysterion had fallen a different way, a different place on the bed. “What’re we gonna do? Is there a demon terrorizing students too?” 

“I don’t know. Can’t do anything about it tonight.”

“You mean _I_ can’t.” 

“Walking is a requirement.” 

Kyle rolls his eyes even though Mysterion’s right — even know the act has his head spinning again. “Be careful,” he says.

Mysterion opens his mouth, pauses, and then shuts it. He studies the bookshelf across from them for a moment. Kyle feels the mattress shift when Mysterion turns to face him. “I’m not afraid of dying,” He says, his hands curling to grip the bed sheets. “But possession can get you sent to the underworld, and I have to stop Valganhorn. For my sister if no one else.” He lifts one hand from the bed and sets a hand on Kyle’s upper arm, holding on. “I’m sorry I crashed in here bleeding with no answers.” He’s close and Kyle’s eyes go wide just to take him in. “Thank you.” 

Kyle feels his cheeks flood with warmth again, heat falling down his neck and shoulders and chest. "No problem," he manages, voice a lot quieter than he'd meant it to be. He looks at his mostly-covered face. Between the hood and the cowl, he can only see a bit of blond hair and his blue eyes. Blue like dark lightning, blue like the middle of a bottomless ocean, blue like water frozen for millennia. Somehow he can come up with a thousand similarities. Kyle wonders if Mysterion will tell him who he is after everything, or if he’s just going to disappear. He watches the easy way wind blows through his bangs and the weary look all across his cheeks. 

He thinks about school and how much he hates studying business and law. The endless hours of reading algorithms and analyses of markets, memorizing legal terms and processes. Most people thought he’d love it. Kyle likes complicated problem solving and all that crap, sure, but the only interesting thing about his law degree are past legal cases are how they shaped society. He thinks about the book Craig had him read, the one about the man who got sick and started dying and realized he’d never really lived, that he’d always just done what everyone else was doing but never what _he_ really wanted to, and he hadn’t really lived since he was a kid-— How he realizes it too late and dies. Kyle thinks about it, and looks up into dark eyes, wants to ask if the reality of R’lyeh and Hell means there’s no oblivion waiting for him but thinks he knows the answer, anyway. 

They’re two different things, Hell and death. Because Mysterion isn’t worried about dying, but he _is_ worried about getting stuck in hell. 

But that means-

“You’re immortal,” Kyle says, the realization a rush banging against the inside of his skull.

Mysterion’s hand on his arm drops. “What?” 

“If you’re worried about being stuck in Hell because it means you can’t stop Valganhorn, but you’re _not_ worried about dying for the same reason…” Kyle lifts an eyebrow at him. 

“Oh.”

“Not hard to work out.”

Mysterion looks a little embarrassed. “Yeah?”

Kyle’s going to drop his degree. Switch his major. Something. _Fuck_ this. He’d just hand-crafted a blood transfusion needled-tube-thingy. There’s Hell, there's R'lyeh, there are apparently immortals. He doesn’t want to sit in an office and vomit legal garbage for a living. He doesn’t want to help people as a pretence for not wanting to feel guilty. There’s a whole world of underground-supernatural-magic _bullshit_ out there that’s been following him his entire life. He wants to do something, he wants to help, really help, and he wants to do it for the right reasons. 

“You’re being weirdly calm about this.” 

Kyle shrugs. “It’s nothing.” 

“I’m surprised you believe me.” 

“Why?”

Mysterion is silent. Kyle waits, wondering about the tension in the long pause. Did he say something wrong? 

“My immortality is a little weird,” Mysterion says. “It's not eternal youth or anything. I die - I've died a lot - but I always wake up the next day. And no one remembers me dying.”

“Huh,” is all Kyle says. He thinks of all the ways that could fuck a person up. And then says, “That’s different.” He'll blame the lack of comment on the blood loss.

“Yeah.” 

They’re still and sitting close, and Kyle can already see the violet blood fading away from the floor and their clothes. It’s uncanny how so much panic from minutes ago can disappear right in front of him. The makeshift blood-transfusion thing he’d made is still on the floor. He’s questioning if the supernaturality of it all is the only reason it had worked. He’s pretty sure the physics hadn’t made sense. 

But it’d happened, and Mysterion almost bled out on his dorm-room floor, and Kyle had discovered secret underground tunnels that connect the school together, and he doesn’t want to waste his life studying law and business and suffocating in some fucking white-bread stale office when he’d never been anything but bored trying to be that person. 

“I’d better go,” Mysterion is saying, but Kyle barely hears him. He sets a hand over Mysterion’s where its resting on the bed. He waits and looks up at him. Mysterion doesn’t move, only looks back at Kyle with his eyes bright and open. The silence hurts his ears and his heart pounds against his ribs, shaking his insides and echoing up through his throat and skull. Kyle’s sure, he’s _pretty_ sure. He remembers the knee pressed against his own weeks ago; he remembers being tucked into his side, under his cape; and he remembers minutes ago when he'd been between his legs, on the floor in the dark, tucked near his chest. Mysterion hadn't moved. He'd kept him there. And Kyle doesn’t do shit like this and not with guys unless he’s sure — and he’s pretty sure — and slowly he leans in. 

There’s a breathless pause and he’s close. Kyle can count the number of kisses he’s had on one hand. He tilts his head a little left and feels Mysterion moving beside him, slow and gradual. Then the hand under his own moves. 

It slips out of his grasp and pushes against his chest. It forces Kyle backwards so suddenly he chokes. 

“What are you doing?” Mysterion says, eyebrows up and unmistakably offended. 

Kyle feels his stomach fall out and drop to the bowels of the earth. 

“I-” Nausea climbs through his veins and fills the empty void his stomach left behind. Kyle feels his face go hot in a flash. “Fuck. I thought-" 

Mysterion lowers his hand. His brow relaxes, but he still looks sick. 

“I’m sor…” In the midst of his whole self shaking, he chokes back one word and tries another. “I'm so fucking stupid.” 

“Kyle.” 

Kyle holds up a hand. “No. Look.” He shakes his head, keeping his gaze locked on the comforter under him. “You go, do the night vigilante thing.” 

“It's okay.” 

Kyle slides back towards the head of his bed, putting a good meter of space between them. “Can we just pretend this never happened? For my own sanity?” He asks. Can't look at him. 

“Alright.”

Waiting to be left alone, Kyle stares at a peeling piece of fake hardwood like it's the most interesting thing in the room. There's no blood left. Everything looks clean. Like it’d never happened.   

“ _Go_ , dude,” he snaps when Mysterion still hasn't moved.

The bed shifts, slower still than the roaring in his head, and in a violet rush of mist Kyle is alone.

 

* * *

 

_—where I pretend he is mine to keep._

 


	8. flowers under my feet, another songbird trapped in Babylon

 

 

* * *

 

The next morning wakes him up groggily and with a throbbing headache. More than anything it’s from barely sleeping. More than the other thing. It’d been nearly four in the morning when Mysterion had left, god knows when the hell Kyle had actually fallen asleep.

He drags himself out of bed. His arms feel wornout like over-stretched elastic, and his tongue slumps at the bottom of his mouth heavy like lead.

Kyle’s not a connoisseur of romance. He’s awkward and a little neurotic. But he’d always considered himself someone who can read other people. He’s not a brave person. He’d never try to kiss someone if he wasn’t sure they wanted to be kissed; he’d never take the risk. But-

Someone’s knocking on the door. Not his bedroom door, but the one in the kitchen he and Craig share. Kyle hears the chair with one busted leg scrape across the kitchen floor, then the door swinging open with the usual creak and groan. There’s a flat ‘What.’ from Craig.

“Is Kyle here?”

A long pause. Craig’s weighing his options, Kyle knows. He also knows who that voice belongs to, but isn’t in the mood to care. If last night hadn’t happened, would he be in the mood? Would he smile shyly to himself, remembering, wrapped in blankets, or be drinking a coffee with Craig and answer the door himself?

“Look, Slut-sigma…” The door creaks again. Kyle holds his breath to listen through the walls of his room. “I would be the last person on Earth to give even one single shit how many people you fuck and how you fuck them.”

Kyle shoves his face in his pillow, slamming his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to have a pity party. He’s not going to play victim here, not for long anyway. Not for a second. Mysterion doesn’t like him and Kyle will handle it.

“But Broflovski is---------” Craig lowers his voice. Kyle can’t hear the rest. Sensitive? Weak? Can’t handle the heartbreak someone might bring him? “-----------start to give at least half a fuck.”

There’s a reply, but it’s lost to the hallway.

The door creaks again, the quieter sound that means Craig’s swung it wide-open. Kyle wants it shut. Then there’s three quiet knocks on his bedroom door.

“Kyle.” Kenny McCormick’s voice floats in like a fog all around him. It makes him angry for a thousand reasons none of which he can name. He curles his fists under the blankets and wishes Craig had told the guy to leave. What’s he doing knocking on their door, anyway?

“Dude, wake up. I’m taking you out.”

How did he even get involved in Kyle’s life?

How does he know where the hell his dorm is? Probably Wendy. She sticks her nose into things more than Kyle does. He grabs his phone off the table and texts her one word: _Traitor_.

“Kyle?” Kenny asks it this time softly with enough worry to sound somber and insecure, leaving the sinking feeling of self-loathing to grow in a rush of weeds inside Kyle’s chest. One single vine creeps through the cracks of the door. It crawls across the far wall and up towards him along the ceiling.

“Yeah,” he says, lying still on his bed, looking at the empty space beside him. The vine drops from above, curling down his shoulder. He sighs. “I’m here.”

 

* * *

 

It’s a beautiful, obnoxiously bright and sunny fall day out. Kyle wants to spit on it all, but refrains.

“Where are we going?” He asks.

Kenny, unhelpfully, says, “You’ll see.”

“Can you just tell me?” The words snap out of Kyle like an elastic band wrapped too tight. Craig gives him a look. Kyle ignores it. He’s not in the mood for Kenny’s bullshit. He’s not in the mood for anything except maybe a joint and sixteen hours of sleep.

Craig, who decided to tag along for reasons absolutely unfathomable to Kyle – Craig never just ‘tags along’ – says, “I’ll spoil the mystery. We’re getting coffee at the place up the street.”

Kenny looks entirely distraught. “Dude.”

“What.”

“I’m doing you a favour,” Kenny says, tugging on Craig’s earlobe. Kyle watches in awe. Craig doesn’t let people touch him, let alone someone he’s known for less than a week. It kind of pisses Kyle off.

Craig swats at Kenny. “Barely.”

“Be nice.”

“This is me being nice. Bask in it, Slut-sigma,” Craig says with no inflexion – but he does look up at the sky for emphasis, hands held easily in his pockets. “Bask.”

Kenny laughs. It’s as bright as the morning sun and equally annoying, so Kyle turns his head to look at the buildings they pass by. A gas station covered in ads, a small-motor repair shop, hair salon, the used book store that resells textbooks… It’s where he’d gotten most of his law books. A chill total of $1200 despite the discounted rate.

He does remember thinking last night that he’ll drop out. But it’s just one of those things you think are a good idea at 3am, but by morning seem like absolute fucking horseshit. Kyle looks a tree up and down, leaves turned dark red and pale yellows.

Being a lawyer for a business firm means money, stability, an office to himself. It’s the plan he’s had since he was a teenager.

The coffee shop is nestled nicely between a new-age-religion book store and a shop that sells healing crystals and essential oils to people who like to think they’re witches. Or literally witches for all Kyle knows anymore.

The inside is made of wood. Mahogany, Kyle’s pretty sure it’s called. The atmosphere is cozy. If he weren’t still sulking from flat rejection, he might’ve liked it more.

They shuffle in to a table near the farthest wall, a long window looking down over Kyle with glaring hard sunlight. Craig gives him some serious shifty-eye, scanning between Kenny and the long window and back at Kyle.

“I'll go get us some drinks. What do you guys want?” Kenny asks.

Kyle gets what he always gets, peppermint tea, and Craig asks for black coffee like the ‘basic bitch he is.’ His words, not Kyle’s.

With Kenny gone off to the counter, Craig squares Kyle with furrowed eyebrows and concern. “Are you alright?” He asks. Sincerity is actually Craig’s best quality. Kyle’s never understood why everyone type-casted him as a Some Indifferent Douche. He’s actually pretty sweet under all the dead-panned sarcasm.

“Fine,” Kyle says.

“So what the fuck is going on?”

Kyle looks at his hands. He can’t say ‘Well some guy dressed in purple spandex with supernatural powers from another dimension asked me to help him stop Professor Valganhorn from molesting young female students plus now there’s some demon and, in the course of helping him with said task, I guess I started to like him but when I – _absolutely sure he’d want to_ – tried to kiss him last night he pushed me away hard enough to break my neck so I’m a little fucked off right now.’

So instead Kyle says, “I’ve been sort of… seeing someone.” Craig nods and hums ‘uh huh’ and waits for Kyle to continue. “Turns out I’m the only one who thought it was…” He sighs, feeling embarrassed, “...something. He’s not into me,” he adds for clarity’s sake.

Craig raises his eyebrows and nods his head towards the coffee shop’s counter.

At Kenny McCormick.

The urge to laugh boils over in his chest and Kyle snorts. “Fuck no dude. Not Kenny.” The idea seems ridiculous, fucking wild. Kenny’s an honourless whore, or something, not that Kyle cares who he sleeps with. Mysterion’s a snarky superhero who decided to do something about the shit in front of him, didn’t just think ‘that’s bad’ and move on. Mysterion’s trying. Kenny’s just fucking his way through a fine-arts degree and getting high every weekend. They’re radically different. Kenny reminds him of quitting. Mysterion makes him feel like he can do anything.

“Why’re you being so shitty to him then?”

“Huh?”

“You’re kinda mean to him, dude. All the time.”

“What?”

Craig just looks at him, waiting.

Kyle frowns. “No I’m not. He’s just…”

Craig raises his chin and keeps staring. “He’s just what.”

Indignation floods Kyle’s already-sour mood. “Nothing.” He risks a glance across the cafe at sunlit blond hair. “I’m not mean to him.”

“Did you read that book I lent you?”

“What?”

“Did you?”

“Some of it.”

“Well, sucks that whoever it was isn’t into you,” Craig says, resting his chin in his hand and looking out the large window. “I’m just surprised it wasn’t McCormick.”

“Wh–” Kyle snaps his mouth shut when he sees that Kenny is on his way back, three drinks held in two hands with stupidly long fingers. His grin is almost blinding.

“Mint tea, boring-ass black coffee,” he says, setting them down in front of Kyle and Craig respectively. Kenny sits and flashes that toothy honest smile at Craig. “And some information.” He winks.

Craig takes a sip of his coffee, mist floating up around his eyes, looking as interested in Kenny as a clam might be in flight engineering or theoretical physics.

But Kenny keeps grinning.

Kyle takes his drink in both hands, holding it for warmth more than anything. His chest feels caved-in.

“You have a blond gentleman-caller behind the counter, Mr. Tucker, and he is off work in ten minutes.”

Craig goes red. He glares at Kenny while the colour blooms all over his cheeks and neck.

Kyle is missing something.

“A promise is a promise. I have delivered,” Kenny says, holding his hands out palms-up.

Craig, still dyed deep red, stands up in an awkward jerk. He has his coffee gripped in one hand like a lifeline between him and the deepest parts of the ocean. “I’ll see you guys later,” he says.

Kyle blinks, perplexed and confused, at his friend’s back as he walks over to the counter.

“What was that?”

Kenny seems content to just smile and shrug and lie through his teeth: “A way to get you alone.”

Kyle's beyond not in the mood. He just rolls his eyes, which is becoming a habit. He can see flowers peeking out from the neck of Kenny's sweater. They look more real now, more than ever.

“So…”

He'd thought the flowers were nagging guilt at first. But Kyle doesn't feel guilty at all, now. He just feels heartbroken, and that has nothing to do with Kenny.

“Hey.” Kenny waves a hand in front of his face. Kyle blinks thrice, snapping out of his head. “Are you alright?”

He doesn't reply straight away. Kyle's fine, it's just rejection and that always sucks. It's only that. He can’t say he really knows Mysterion, it’d just felt like _something._

He’s been through worse.

“I know I dragged you out here dude, but if you want to go you know you can, right?” Kenny says.

Kyle again is noncommittal.

“A friend of mine yelled at me once,” Kenny continues, leaning even further back in his seat. “She said, ‘just because _you_ do whatever you want whenever you want, Kenneth McCormick, doesn't mean everybody else is as comfortable telling someone to fuck off.’” His impersonation of his likely-female friend is high pitched and ridiculous. Kyle feels his mouth trying to tug up into a smile. “If I'm bothering you, you can tell me to fuck off,” Kenny says in his normal melodic timbre, “I can't read you at all.”

Kyle looks him up and down, the messy hair and blue eyes and paint spots all along his hands. The flowers creeping down his arms. The easy way he sits in his chair. The gap between his teeth. He sighs.

“I'd tell you to fuck off if I wanted to.”

Kenny grins. “Oh good.”

“I had shitty night.” Kyle watches one of the staff rush by with a mop to clean some kind of spill just behind them. It’s loud in the cafe. It drowns out any specific conversation, making their small table their own space. “I did something stupid, and I need to move on.”

Kenny's expression is hard to read. He looks somewhere between tired and like he's been holding his breath.

“Alright,” he says, the weird expression vanishing, “In the spirit of moving on, how are your classes going?”

It's a benign question, one that most people would assume is a safe, non-personal one. But it isn't far removed from Kyle's shit night. He sighs softly enough so Kenny doesn't hear it and says, “I've been thinking about dropping out.” No– That isn't what he's thinking and he hadn’t, not for a fucking second, meant to say it.

Blond eyebrows climb to the top of a tanned face. Three star-shaped white flowers with black tips rise with them, sitting alert on his shoulders. “Really?” Another flower pokes out from behind Kenny's left ear. It's a violette.

“I've got this idea,” Kyle starts, staring at his hands wrapped like chains around his tea.

“Yeah?”

“It's stupid, but I've always wanted…” What? Not that stupid thing, not that old thing he hasn’t bothered wondering about in– months?

“What?” Kenny asks, blue eyes as bright and open as the endless unfolding sky behind him.

“I used to think about opening a cat café,” Kyle says, deflating in his chest and sinking down into his chair. He watches surprise expand over Kenny’s face. It’s weird, Kyle knows, it’s way out of left field. But he’s always liked cats. “There’s hundreds of cats in shelters and on the street, and I could use the café to help them get adopted. I've read all the health and safety regulations, and I know how to turn a profit now, and there isn't one around in a nine-hundred mile radius. I…” Kyle stops. He can feel his heart rate beating quicker. He hasn't bothered thinking about this in a long time. Since last summer.

“You…?” Kenny asks. Now leaning forwards in his chair, his long arms are strung out along their shared table.

“It sounds stupid.” Kyle waves a hand and looks at his tea. “It _is_ stupid. I could make three times as much in law, and how the hell does a cat café help people?” He can’t look Kenny in the eye – looks instead at his own hands, wondering what to do with them. “I want to help people. It's all I've ever done, it's what gives...” He shuts his mouth tight. It’s what gives him purpose. “Do you ever think about what you'll regret when you're old and closer to dying?” Kyle asks. Kenny blinks at him, taken off-guard at the conversational whiplash probably, and then just nods. Kyle continues. “If I can help people, I’ll never feel that.”

Kenny's mouth hangs open like a fly trap. The gape turns, gradual as a flower opens under spring rain, into a wide grin.

“It's not stupid,” he says, “I think that sounds exactly like you.”

 _What would you know,_ Kyle thinks between heartbeats, _about what is exactly me?_

He looks at Kenny, silent. Something around his eyes gives him sort of a lonely feeling. His heart slams against his chest from a different sense altogether.

“And a cat café could help cats. Fuck people,” Kenny says and Kyle feels himself laugh, only once. “There are all kinds of problems in the world.” Kenny takes a lazy drink of what Kyle assumes is coffee. He slouches back in his wooden seat again, legs probably sprawled out like tangled weeds under the table, though Kyle doesn’t look. “You already know, but you won’t be able to help anyone if you’re not happy.”

_You already know._

He does. It’s just… “I know. It’s just…”

“Fear will make you do crazy shit, man.” Kenny closes his eyes. Kyle’s filled with questions. What are you afraid of? What did you do? Where’d you get that scar from? The one just under your left ear down to your jaw. “Don’t be afraid of trying. You don’t like law, right?” Kyle feels himself nodding, doesn’t mean to. He hates it. He doesn't want to admit it because it means he’s wasted so much _time_ – because doing what he wants isn’t as sure. “Then fuck it.”

Dandelions tangle through blond hair. Kyle gets a chill, sudden but familiar.

“Jesus, I need a smoke,” Kenny says, a shuddering laugh falling from his mouth. “Kinda heavy for ten AM dude.”

Kyle snorts. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Oh yeah.” Leaning his long frame forward again across the small table, Kenny grins like a wolf. He looks up at Kyle through near-white eyelashes. “I can be deep.” The grin slices sharply through one side of his face. “Really deep.” Kenny winks at him.

“Jesus christ,” Kyle says, pushing Kenny’s face away with the palm of his hand. His heart is vibrating against his ribs but he holds his expression in mild annoyance. “Is this what you’re like on dates?”

“Is this a date?”

Heat rushes Kyle and a swarm of yellow roses with it, surging from behind Kenny and circling him like a twisted hive.

“Everyday is, technically,” Kyle says, keeping his voice even. If he was anyone else, if he’d had a normal childhood – a normal life – he would be wondering if he’d lost his mind. But the flowers aren’t a vivid hallucination. They’re not dangerous, either. What they mean might be. Where they’re coming from might have nothing to do with guilt, or Kenny – or everything to do with him but not his fault.

 _Ask me out_ , Kyle hears his hurried head plead. _Ask me out now and I’ll say yes._

“Then I guess this is - technically - a date,” Kenny says, his smile lopsided and lazy. “By your own logic.”

Kyle pouts. “That’s not fair.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t make fun of that without making fun of myself.”

“Oh.” Kenny’s lopsided smile fills out to a full one. “Sucks for you, I guess.”

Kyle folds his arms and furrows his brows. “Yeah,” he says, “I’m stuck on a technical date with _you_.”

Kenny laughs, and opens his mouth to reply. Kyle’s heart is thudding hard enough to pull at the veins down the back of his neck. Excitement is one thing, and this is something else. This is nerves and anxiety and intent. He hopes his head can keep up.

“I–” Kenny starts, stuttering while looking directly at Kyle. He breaks and falters and then laughs again, breathless, lost, folding in on himself away from the table, out of his own depth; Kenny looks down at his hands wrapped tight around his own drink. Kyle’s never been on the other end of it, this nervousness, timidity. Insecurity. “Dude, I’m sorry. I can’t think of anything funny to say.”

Kyle’s heart slows down. “It’s alright, me neither.”

“Thank god.” Kenny smiles at him and Kyle thinks he must not know he’s doing it. “You know how to wear a guy out.”

Kyle snorts.

“I mean it,” Kenny says. Kyle has no idea what he means and doesn’t ask. It seems too personal. It seems committal. “And I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“You had a bad night, right?”

Sinking embarrassment comes back to him. He’d almost managed to forget about Mysterion. Kyle rolls his eyes to fight off the indignation and shame. “It’s his loss anyway.”

There’s empty air, dark clouds rolling in to cover the morning sky and burn off the sunlight. Pink flowers thread their way between long fingers. Kyle sighs and feels his heart hang heavily from himself like a hook. Last night seems like a dream.

“Definitely,” Kenny says.


	9. running red to the stop

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Kyle bangs the back of his head on the wall behind him, looking up at the library’s ceiling. The coffee “date” with Kenny McCormick had been three days ago, and the fuck-up with Mysterion the night before that. Neither have tried to talk to him since. Kyle’s grateful, for the most part. He has no idea how he feels, what to do. It’s easier to do nothing.

Worrying is unavoidable, though. Has the demon tried to hurt anyone? Has it tried to hurt Mysterion again? Kyle’s doing his best to keep tabs on Valganhorn on his own, but he wishes the hero would contact him. Just to check in.

His shift that evening ends at the library uneventfully. Craig texts him that there’s a party going on in the dorm, something they do for each other as neither of them are partiers and only live in the dorm for the discounted rent. _I think it’s spreading into the courtyard_ , Craig’s text reads, _Fuck_. That means it’s a big one. Halloween party, probably. Kyle’s been too busy to keep up with campus events.

Maybe he’ll go to the basement and see if Kenny’s there with that other guy – Tweek. Weird name. But the idea reminds him of running through the abandoned underground tunnels, totally alone and trying to make a blood transfusion happen; the press of fear from the threat of death. So Kyle doesn’t go. 

He packs his books, throws out a mint tea he barely remembers buying, and decides to stay at the library. It’s closed this late at night. He locks the doors and heads back to his desk. 

As soon as he sits, he hears someone speak. 

The lights over the rows and rows of bookshelves are all off. The school admin set them on timers and Kyle hasn't figured out a way to turn them on after-hours. So he's left with the library's entrance lights, his monitor, and the flashlight on his phone. 

It isn't the first time he's heard people in here at night, though. Trying to hook up or selling weed, mostly – generally harmless. But between Valganhorn and the demon, Kyle’s on high alert. 

Someone else speaks again, muffled from the other side of the rows and rows of books. It’s deep and likely male. Kyle’s skin crawls. His hands freeze at his sides and he holds his breath, listening hard until he's sure. 

".... place?"

Taking in a sharp, quiet breath, Kyle slips further towards the bookshelves. He leaves the lights on at his workstation; Valganhorn and whoever he's talking to must know he's there, the monitor is like a torch in a dark cave. Keeping himself low and hidden, Kyle creeps down the rows of books, four sections away from the whispering. 

He can't hear much. His heartbeat is too loud in his ears. After a minute it doesn't matter anyway: Henrietta steps out from between the isle, Valganhorn behind her. 

The last time Kyle had seen Henrietta was at their high school graduation. As far as he knew, she’d moved away to South America for ‘undisclosed reasons’ and had never looked back. He keeps her contact information for emergencies of the weird or uncanny variety, but other than that, doesn’t keep track of her at all. 

It can’t be a coincidence that she’s here while a professor is harassing girls and a demon is terrorizing the school.

Whatever’s going on, Kyle's following them. Tough as he remembers Henri being tough and independent, he’s _not_ letting her go with him alone.

Henrietta and Valganhorn leave the library out the coffee shop exit. Kyle circles the building out the front and sees them getting into a car. He can hear, just gently through the cool fall air, Henrietta laughing.

Kyle doesn't have a car, and his bike's all the way at the dorm. He doesn't have a direct link to R'yleh to portal him around either, no thanks to the AWOL superhero who supposed to be dealing with this shithead. 

Probably, hopefully, they're going to Valganhorn's house. 

Kyle books it to his dorm to get his bike. He starts to hear the party the closer he gets, loud music blaring into the courtyard and pockets of people holding drinks in clusters. Kyle runs by them, knocking into someone and spilling both their beer and a loud shout from their mouth. 

He jumps over the rail to the stairwell that leads to his dorm. The hallway is overcrowded, sweat-covered people grinding and shaking with laughter. Kyle slips through as fast as he can. It stinks like booze and grease so he holds his breath as he sidles between sweaty bodies. 

Just as he gets to his door, a shock of blond hair nearly stops him in his tracks. 

Kenny's eyes are closed. His neck is bent back in a contorted, twisted arc. A girl with long black hair has him pushed up against a wall, two doors down from Kyle’s dorm. 

Kyle doesn't stop. He just glares at Kenny and says _Asshole_ under his breath as he walks into his dorm and slams the door shut. Kenny might notice or he might not – Kyle doesn’t have time for more of this shit. He doesn’t have time to _care_ about this shit. 

Getting the bike down the hall is harder. He yells at people to move and makes his way eventually. Henrietta’s probably got a plan of her own -- but it’s still not safe. He needs to get there. He needs to help.

“Kyle!” He hears Kenny say his name twice, but Kyle doesn’t turn around. Kenny McCormick can kiss whoever the hell he wants – he didn’t promise Kyle anything, _they_ aren’t anything – but he's fucking done. A person can only take so much embarrassment. How could he do this to himself twice? It’s Craig’s fucking fault for suggesting it and Kyle’s fault for thinking, even for a second, someone like Kenny would think of Kyle in any other way than the way he thinks of everyone he wants to fuck. 

“Kyle!” Kenny catches up to him outside. He looks from Kyle to the bike gripped in his hands. “Where’re you going?” 

“None of your business.”

“It–” Kenny stops and tugs a hand through his hair. No flowers bloom, no vines twist or wrap around his neck or shoulders or anything. Kyle kind of just wants to hit him. “Is everything okay?” 

He swings one leg over his bike and doesn’t answer. Kyle speeds past Kenny’s left side as fast as he can, heading down towards the dark streets. 

It's hard to see. The lights only do so much through the fall fog and the moonless sky. He cuts through a few backyards, wanting to move fast. Mud splashes up along the back of his calves. Valganhorn's house is seventeen streets away. Kyle had counted on the map more than once. Memorized every way to get there. 

He stops outside the neighbour's front yard and tosses his bike behind a hedge. He slips his phone out of his jacket pocket and opens the camera, sneaking up to a window along the side of Valganhorn's house. The red circle blinks on and his phone starts recording. The window is dark. 

He’ll break the goddamn window if he doesn’t see them or if he does and Henrietta’s about to get hurt. Henri will probably light the asshole on fire if he tries anything, which makes Kyle relax a bit. 

Holding his breath, he creeps closer to the front window. 

A shape moves across the dark pane. If it's either of them, it's definitely Valganhorn going by the size. Kyle holds his breath still and holds the camera up, cool wind passing over his ears and under the hair at the back of his neck. His heart speeds up even though he's done shit like this a million times. Snuck around at night, trespassed, general various acts of law-breaking; ironic for a law student, Craig usually says. 

His camera's just hitting the 1 minute mark, still having recorded nothing but that figure hurrying across the room, when Kyle hears soft feet on the grass. 

He assumes it's Mysterion. Who else? If the “hero” is worth half his weight he'd be tracking the pervert too. 

But it isn't him. From the red-sweater vest to the too-wide shoulders and black hair. And Kyle's quick but he's startled, and he hadn't brought a bat or anything else to fight with. He dodges once but when he comes back up Valganhorn smacks him across the head with a rock and he hits the wet ground. 

He blinks hard to fight off oblivion, but it overtakes him with the ease of soft fall wind rolling over his temples.

 

* * *

 

Kyle wakes up slowly, dragged into consciousness by a bright light. He's in a basement, probably – hopefully – Valganhorn's. He's tied to an old wooden chair, thin wire tight and cutting into his skin through his sweater.

Beside him, on his right, is Henrietta. She's tied up too. Her dark eyes are wide open though, alert and royally pissed. She has a rag shoved in her mouth.

Her brows are drawn in hard diagonal lines towards her nose in the scariest glare Kyle's ever seen. He catches her gaze and she relaxes the brows slightly. The left one hikes up to a high arc, and Henrietta looks Kyle up and down.

“I know,” Kyle says, looking around the room. “We need to get untied.” 

Henrietta grunts and nods her head toward her pocket, eyebrows furrowing in hopeful frustration. 

“Something in there?” 

She nods furiously, gesturing a ‘come here’ motion with her hand, awkwardly from where it’s tied to her torso.

It isn’t too difficult. Kyle sidles carefully towards her, wiggling the chair’s legs. He slips two fingers into her pocket, both of them stuck cheek-to-cheek and hip-to-hip, making the process difficult. Henrietta says something through the rag shoved into her mouth, a command of some sort, and Kyle replies that he’s trying while panic starts to ensue. After a minute of awkward contorting and perarious flexibility, Kyle pulls a pair of tiny scissors from her pocket.

“Why do you have these?” He asks. 

Henrietta only glares at him.

“Right.” 

Kyle bends his wrist unnaturally and cuts through the wire around Henrietta’s legs, then arms. She twists out of her confines and takes the scissors from Kyle, cutting him free as well. 

“They’re hair scissors,” she says, tossing the rag that'd been in her mouth on the ground, “And I brought them just incase. Valganhorn took my purse, but he didn’t bother checking anything else.” She drops the wire to the floor. “What are you doing here?” 

Kyle stands up with her, rubbing red lines along his wrists. “Me?” He looks at Henrietta, then around the room again, wondering if they should try the window. “What about you?” 

“A helpless victim, obviously.” She swats her long black hair over one shoulder. “This asshat’s up to something.” She looks around the room, eyeing the window too. “He’s been trying to sacrifice virgins like a dumbass. I came here to stop him.” 

“Virgins?” 

“Like a dumbass. Hell doesn’t give a fuck. Why is everyone so stupid?” She walks over to the door, turning the knob. Locked. “I got an energy signal from here, so I came. I’ve been trying to figure this shit out for weeks,” she continues,  walking over to the window now, “He uses some kind of hypnosis, or magic, to lure girls here. He hasn’t hurt anyone, though.” 

“Thanks to you?” 

Henrietta snorts. “Thanks to the fact that he knows shit all about Hell.” 

Kyle nods. He’s not sure about the virgin thing, but Valganhorn’s still trying to hurt people. They still need to stop him. “I’ve been trying to record him while he’s— you know, luring girls in, I guess. So I could report him.” He feels stupid, saying it now. 

“Why didn’t you tell me there was some crazy asshole using hell-magick to lure in virgin sacrifices he doesn’t even need? You know what I do.” Henri waves a hand. “Vaguely.”

“We didn’t know there was anything supernatural going on,” Kyle says, tugging at red hair that’s gone haywire during the last hour.

“We?”

“Uh. Long story. Remember the guy I called you about?” 

She nods. “He okay?” 

“Yeah.” Kyle doesn’t offer anything else. “We should just get out of here.” 

“Right. Window?” 

“Window.” 

It’s easy enough to open, but the size is questionable. Henrietta pulls herself up and fits through without a hitch.

Kyle’s a little bigger in the shoulders but smaller in the waist. With Henrietta standing outside and yanking on his arms he makes it through. 

It’s dark and cold outside. He must not have been knocked out for very long. Fall leaves rustle, stars blink overhead like billions of celestial search-lights, and everything else is silent. 

“That was….” 

“Too easy,” Henrietta finishes for him. “I know. Something’s—”

The quiet around them breaks as sudden as cracking ice. The sound of heavy heaving footsteps crunching in the wet grass. Kyle whips around and Valganhorn is there, a thick carcass of a man standing on stiff shaft-like legs. Kyle’s seen him before, in the daylight, in class. But the thing standing in front of them is barely human. It’s misshapen, grotesque. Bulbous. 

“Fuck.” Henrietta whispers. 

Valganhorn doesn’t see them, though. He walks past at a droning pace, his eyes fixed on his front door. He leaves them alone on his lawn.

“Come on,” Henrietta says, watching the empty space Valganhorn left behind. “He’s gone, let’s go.” 

Kyle doesn’t respond. The cold air hangs heavy, and something doesn’t feel right. 

“ _Broflovski_.” 

He sees the flux of violet mist swirl and bend out the front door, expanding into the dark sky and disappearing. He sees it before Henri had said his name. He sees it, clear and familiar, and stops breathing. 

“Mysterion’s inside.” 

He doesn’t think or ask himself a hundred questions about intent versus honest desire to help, about death or the lack of an afterlife, about doing the right thing or doing what he really wants. 

There isn’t a question to be asked. Kyle watches the mist swirl out into the sky and digs his heels into wet earth, bolting into Valganhorn’s home. 

When he gets inside, he can’t see anything but fire. It’s wrapped in a perfect circle, the flames sunset-red and burning too-tall for their width. They look completely unnatural. Inside the center Mysterion stands still, trapped. His cape has been torn in half, and the hood covering his head, as well as his cowl, have been torn around the edges. There are claw marks across his chest. 

“ _M_ –!” 

A hand clamps down over his mouth. Henri is behind him, glaring holes into the back of his head.

“Fucking idiot,” she says, letting him go. She looks across the room at the circle of red fire. Valganhorn’s back is to them, and Mysterion isn’t looking their way. “This is your friend?” 

Kyle nods, feeling exactly like the adjective she’d called him. “I need to help him.” 

“Hold on.” 

Henri closes her eyes and holds out her palms, concentrating. A beat later, Kyle feels air rushing across his face and a giant, snow-white skinned monster is floating six feet away from him, right next to Henri.

It has six arms – three on each of its long, spiney sides – and seven eyes, three on both sides of its angular head and one in the center, on the top. This is the only eye that’s opened. It’s black with no iris or pupil. 

“Kyle, this is my friend Phlox.” 

HELLO, MAMMALIA. 

The words don’t travel on waves of sounds to reach his ears. The creature’s voice echoes inside his head. 

“She’s a Scry demon, fourth tier,” Henri says as if that should mean anything to Kyle. “Scry demons are a low-level summon – they give information. She’s been helping me with Valganhorn. We can ask her what to do.” 

Phlox regards Kyle with her single black eye, bending over him with a mountainous curve in her snake-like back. 

WHAT DO YOU WISH TO KNOW, YOUNG MAMMAL OF SMALL EVOLUTIONARY ANCESTRY?

Mysterion’s in trouble. Kyle doesn’t overthink it. Henri’s been after Valganhorn with the help of a demon, okay. Cool. _Good_. He tries his best to meet her eye. “I want to save that asshole over there,” he says, pointing. “The one in purple.” 

THE ONE IN PURPLE IS DEVIANT. 

Henrietta looks at Kyle with raised brows. 

“Yeah,” Kyle says, guessing the demon is using the adjective by its more literal definition. “He’s not from around here.” 

IT IS EVERLASTING. 

Kyle thinks for a second, trying to figure out what that might mean. “Oh.” He looks at Henrietta. “He’s immortal,” he explains. 

“ _What?!_ ” 

“What?” Kyle asks, keeping a wary eye on the circle of fire around Mysterion. Why isn’t Valganhorn _doing_ anything? He’s just standing there, his back to them, watching Mysterion in the midst of all that fire. 

“He’s fucking _what?!_ ” Henrietta snaps again.

THIS LARGER MAMMAL IS ATTEMPTING A SACRIFICE. Two of Phlox’s arms fold out, five ball-and-socket joints on each one. They hold out a small black ball of light. THIS LARGER MAMMAL IS ATTEMPTING TO OPEN A GATE. 

“Fuck fuck fuckity _fuck_ —” 

“A gate to where?” Kyle asks. 

HELL. The demon closes her twenty fingers and the black orb disappears. THE ONE IN PURPLE IS THE SACRIFICE. IT IS EVERLASTING. 

“You didn’t tell me he was fucking _immortal!_ ” Henrietta grabs his arm, spinning Kyle towards her. 

“I didn’t know it mattered!” He says, looking from her, to the demon, and to Valganhorn who still isn’t _doing_ anything. “What’s going on?!” 

Henrietta grinds her teeth. “Opening a Hellgate takes a lot of energy,” she says, “This asshat’s probably been after your friend this whole time. If I’d known there was a fucking _immortal_ in town I could’ve saved us this headache.” She eyes her Scry demon. 

THE MUTANT IS NOT OF HELL. Phlox says by way of explanation. Then she looks at Kyle. IT IS EVERLASTING. THIS WOULD SUFFICE. A GATE WILL OPEN. 

“And what happens then?” Kyle asks the white demon, his heart kicking against every bone in his chest, the sound echoing in his head. 

ALL OF HELL IS UNLEASHED. 

“No. What happens to _him_?” 

The demon opens two of her lower eyes, both of which are red. They bore into him. He can feel heat and fear rushing in from those eyes, flooding his head.

ERASURE. 

“How do I stop it?” Kyle takes a step closer to her. Henri grabs his arm, but Kyle ignores it. “I’ll do anything.”

ANYTHING. 

 Kyle nods. “He means something to me.” 

There isn’t much else he can say. 

Phlox curves her back further, bending over him like a great white arch made of flesh and bones. Her four remaining eyes blink open. Each one of these is pale blue, like a fog-damp morning in Spring. Smoke rolls inside them. Four of her arms reach out, grabbing Kyle’s shoulders with forty spindle-fingers. 

YOU FEAR DEATH, MAMMALIA. The demon’s misshapen body leans in closer, all eyes on him. YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS AFTER. THE PRESENCE OF HELL DOES NOT PROMISE FOR YOU AN AFTER. I WILL NOT GIVE YOU ANSWERS. 

It leans in closer still. Kyle lowers his gaze to the ground, gyprock and shattered glass under his feet. There’s something hypnotizing about the demon’s voiceless voice. All he needs to do is listen. 

YOU ARE WORRIED ALL ACTION IS A PRETENCE. YOU ARE WORRIED YOU HELP OTHERS OUT OF ARCHAIC SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM, AND NOT AUTHENTICITY. YOU WISH TO DO THINGS HONESTLY. 

Cold near-winter wind zips through the crumbling living room, passing across Kyle’s cheeks and shoulders. He shivers. Henrietta says something from behind him, but Kyle doesn’t hear it. 

YOUR FEAR OF DEATH MAKES THIS ACTION TRUE, SMALL ONE. YOU ARE ACTING OUT OF YOUR APPROXIMATION OF LOVE. THIS SURPASSES THE EVERLASTING IN SOME WAYS.

“What do I—”

YOU MAY BECOME THE SACRIFICE.

The four hands uncoil from his shoulders, sudden and slick like snakes. Phlox moves back to rest beside Henrietta again. 

BUT FEAR NOTHING, MAMMALIA. DEATH IS ONLY THE END. 

Kyle steps closer to the demon, his guts curling up in a tight ball. “How do I do it?” 

“Broflovski--” 

“If I switch places with him,” Kyle says, cutting Henrietta off, “he might be able to close the gate, or help you fight off whatever the fuck comes out of it.” He looks back over at Valganhorn. Nothing’s changed, though the fire’s growing higher. 

THERE IS ALSO A CHANCE OF MALFUNCTION. A PASSAGE TO HELL REQUIRES ENERGY THE TINY MAMMALIA DOES NOT HAVE. 

“There you go,” Kyle says, “So-”

He hears a scream, moanful and pained. Snapping his gaze around Henrietta and Phlox, Kyle sees black vines wind themselves around Mysterion’s body and yank him to the crumbled livingroom floor. Gyprock and plaster fall around him. The house is starting to fall apart. 

Kyle looks back up at the demon, ears ringing. 

“What do I do?” 

CALL HIM.

“What?” 

CALL HIS NAME. 

“Mysterion?” 

HIS TRUE NAME. 

Kyle’s stomach drops. “I don’t know it,” he says, while the walls of neon fire climb all the way to the ceiling. Mysterion screams again from inside the circle of flora and flames. “I can ask him. He’ll tell me now--”

THE MUTANT CANNOT HEAR US. HE IS PASSING.

Henri sets a hand on his shoulder, staring evenly at him. “Kyle, you’re smart. You pay attention. He must’ve slipped up at some point. _Think_.” 

Kyle stares at the fire licking at the white ceiling, feeling weightless and lost. 

Henrietta kicks him in the shin. “How did you guys meet?” 

“He just,” Kyle rubs his shin, thankful for the wake-up, “showed up in my room one night.”

“Why?” 

 _Look_ _——_ _a girl almost got raped by one of the professors here._  

“Because Valganhorn was assaulting girls on campus,” he says.

“Okay.” Henri grips Kyle’s upper arm hard. “He probably had a reason to get involved. He probably knew one of them.” 

“Oh-” 

The ground starts to shake under them. Valganhorn lets out a cackle of delight, every part maniacal. Kyle can’t see Mysterion anymore. The fire’s too high and there might be a bottomless gorge opening. 

 _I’m not afraid of dying. But possession can get you sent to the underworld, and I have to stop Valganhorn. For my sister if no one else._  

“The first girl, she was his little sister,” Kyle says, running his mind through every interaction he can remember. It isn’t all of them, can’t be, and the ones that stick aren’t always relevant. He tries to remember from the very start.

 _Don't tell my brother, okay? He'll just freak out._  

 _You know I can't promise that._  

Kyle almost chokes on a sharp intake of air. “Bebe--” He whips around, pulling his phone out of his pocket, his back to Mysterion so he can focus. “His _sister_! His fucking-- Bebe knows her. She--” Bebe knows that girl’s older brother, the little brunette who’s barely 16 and finished high school early who’s over-protective brother probably followed her here because he knows the world can be shit and Mysterion had said it was his little sister a week after Bebe had told him and holy shit fucking _cunting_ hell Kyle’s known this _whole fucking time_ how can he be this shitting _stupid_ _——_  

The line rings and Bebe picks up, sounding pissed. 

“Kyle. It’s four in the morning. Fucking hell do you w-” 

“Do you remember that girl?”

“Specifics, Kyle. Please.”

“The one Valganhorn assaulted. Two months ago. Brown hair.” 

“Karen?” 

Rock and deep-earth fold in behind him, crashing to the bottom of the planet, down a deep gorge opening up in the livingroom floor. The echo is hollow and long-lasting. The fire groans and grows higher, turning the ceiling and walls black. 

Mysterion’s nowhere. It could be too late -- 

Phlox moves to shield them from rolling fire. 

“ _What’s her older brother’s name?_ ” He asks Bebe, knuckles turning white where he's gripping his phone.

Kyle can practically hear her lips scrunching up in angry confusion.

“If you want this to work, Broflovski, now would be--”

“ _Kenny?_ ” Bebe says through the phone, all sarcasm and annoyance. “Kenny McCormick? Why the fuck _—_ ” 

 _Kenny?_  

 _Kenny McCormick?_  

Kyle blinks but can’t make anything out except the roaring in his head.

 _Kenny_?

Everything falls away from him, the floor and the ceiling, the fire and Henrietta yelling something at him, the white demon and every fact he’d held as concrete and certain. The pressing unreality, the uncanniness of these two points of his life connecting, two people unrelated and then the click of light when he connects all the parts that don’t _work_ , the unwanted kiss and Kenny’s insistent persistent flirting, what kind of _asshole does that_ , but _——_  

Kyle drops his phone. His heart pounds in his chest, each rib rattled and sore, aching. 

Henrietta’s yelling his name, but he doesn’t stop. Kyle walks, as easy as any stroll to morning class, towards the circle of fire and wide gorge in the falling-away floor. He reaches his hand into the flames. He doesn’t know how, but he knows he needs to.

He’s still in there, suspended by black vines, dying. His hood and cowl are gone, burn marks all across his tanned and freckled cheeks. Blond hair swaying in winds caused by roaring hellfire. Blue eyes Kyle can’t believe he ever thought were grey. Wildflowers burst through the fire, reaching for him, stretching until they snap. 

Kyle says his name. His voice is breathless and afraid. Angry.

Then everything goes white.

 

* * *

 

The black vines that had held him dissolve into grey dust. The fire wisps out of existence, dying in a lifeless breath. Kenny McCormick is left kneeling on the floor with nothing but black char all around him. He looks up where Kyle is, a fragile moment frozen while his soul re-connects to his body.

Kenny feels his world shatter as Kyle collapses to the ground, just a few feet away. Stands as fast as he can, blond hair shaking char into his eyes, knees wobbling.

“ _Kyle_!” He yells, throat dry from screaming. He isn’t sure which voice he’d used, his own or Mysterion’s. It hurt to talk.  “What happened?” He asks, setting both hands on Kyle’s face, holding him. “What the _hell_ did you do?” Kenny hasn’t cried in a long time. Not since grade school, at least.

Kyle's eyes stay shut. His head is limp where it rests on his lap, the rest of him lifeless. 

“I’d like to know, too,” Valganhorn says, somewhere to Kenny’s right. “But it doesn’t matter. If I can’t-”

Valganhorn stops abruptly, the last syllable coming out garbled. 

Kenny lowers his hand. Violet vapor swirls out from a hole through Valganhorn’s head, blood beginning to pour down his jaw and neck.

“Well, _that’s_ dealt with,” someone behind Kenny says as Valganhorn’s lifeless body flops to the ground.   

Kenny moves red hair away from closed eyes. “Kyle,” he says again, throat rougher, eyes still wet. He holds his head carefully in his lap. This was the one ending he didn’t want. This was the _only_ thing he didn’t want. “ _Fuck_ ,” he wipes at tears before they can fall, “You weren’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to…” 

“Hey.” Someone kicks at his boot. 

Kenny looks over his shoulder. There’s a black-haired woman standing next to an eight-foot tall floating demon.

“You possessed me,” Kenny says, tensing. He’d recognize her anywhere. 

MY APOLOGIES. The white demon reaches out two of her six arms. IF YOU GIVE ME THE TINY MAMMALIA, I CAN RE-CENTER HIM. HE IS ONLY WORN FROM MAGIC HIS BODY DOES NOT UNDERSTAND. 

Kenny glares. “Don’t fucking touch him.” He raises a hand back, ready to fight. He feels mist trail out from his hands as they shake. His vision is blurry. 

The black-haired woman holds her own hands up, with clear non-violent intent. “Phlox possessed you because we thought _you_ were the one trying to open up a hellgate. You were always sneaking around at night,” she says, glaring right back at Kenny. “Turns out it was this corpse and you were the sacrifice.” Kyle had said he had a friend, right? One who knew about hell. “My name is Henrietta, free-lance demon hunter. You and Broflovski know shit all about hell. He should’ve called me from the start. Shut up and let my friend help.” 

Kenny looks at Kyle’s too-white face, and determines his options are limited. He sets Kyle’s head down gently and moves aside. 

The white demon comes in like a fog, lifting Kyle into her arms. INCUBATION COMMENCED.   

“The only reason I didn’t kill that asshole sooner was because I thought he was possessed,” Kenny says, feeling the need to defend himself. Feeling stupid and wholly fucking useless. 

Henrietta rolls her eyes. She kicks Kenny in the boot again, but he gets the sense she means well.  “You’d both be dead if it weren’t for us.”

Watching the colour come back to Kyle’s face, Kenny doesn’t argue.

 

 

 

 


	10. i build bridges with these arms, i will not build a fortress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sad to finish this, but also happy. It's my first completed multi-chapter story! I'm on a roll haha. Thank you for all the comments. I loved writing this. 
> 
>  
> 
> Enjoy! :)

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Kyle shifts uncomfortably in his hospital bed. A loud, angry headache has been eating at him, the result of some painkillers he apparently took last night. He blinks a few times, flexes his toes under the thin sheets, and looks out a small window. He’s been awake for about an hour.

Henrietta and Phlox had been there when he’d first woken up. Henri had torn him a new one for being ‘a cunting fuckless idiot about hell’ and she told him his friend was okay. She then explained that, apparently, ‘you and your friend are soul-linked’ and that's why Kyle had been able to stop the sacrificial ritual.  He'd asked _what? when?_ _how_? But they weren’t sure. ‘It’s old magic. But lucky for us, Hell can’t make a claim on you. So when you switched with your friend, the sacrifice failed.’ 

APOLOGIES FOR FRIGHTENING YOU, MAMMALIA. YOU HAD TO BELIEVE DEATH WAS COMING. THE SWITCH NEEDED STRENGTH, CONVICTION. I AM SORRY. 

He had about a million more questions to ask both of them, but decided they could wait. He thanked Phlox, promised to text Henri the next time something demonic showed up in his life, and then they left. 

Nurses had come in next, changing the bandage over his right hand, talking about burn degrees and estimated healing time. Kyle thanked them too, and they left. 

He has a few stitches and feels like shit, but- “Not dead,” he says to himself, looking at his scratched-up hands. What had happened to all his fear? In the moment, it hadn’t mattered. He doesn’t think he’s over it. Fuck the reality of death but it’s nice to know, half-awake in a bed that isn’t his own, that some moments can be like that.

Stretching his legs out, Kyle wonders where Craig is, and if he’s worried. His phone’s in his pocket so he sends him a text. _I’m fine if you’re wondering_. This earns him a _what the fuck_ for a reply. Kyle doesn’t respond. He’ll see Craig eventually.

It’s the 14th, late afternoon, so he’s only been out for one day. He turns the tv on in the room, and switches to the local news. There’s gotta be something on about what happened last night. This isn’t South Park. People will _remember_. 

A news anchor is mid-sentence when the screen blinks on. “--- strange red fire started on Bay Street around midnight last night. Despite the roaring blaze, when fire rescue arrived the flames had been extinguished and our local _superhero_ was on scene. He, as always, did not stop for comment.  The city has had various past run-ins with this mysterious hero, from the Red Riot biker gang last summer to your everyday car thief. And still the whole town is wondering, who _is_ Mysterion?” 

Kyle glares and turns the tv off. 

A knock at the door makes him drop his phone. “Visitor for you, pumpkin,” the nurse says, holding the door open. 

It can only be one person, and Kyle sticks a scowl on his face so fast he nearly gets expressive whiplash. 

“Hey—” 

“You _asshole_.” 

Kenny opens his mouth to explain. Immediately Kyle sees the gap between his front teeth and feels so stupid for not noticing sooner. Of course Mysterion would hide his mouth. Fucking… _fuck_. 

“I'm sorry.”

“I thought- Do you have _any_ fucking idea—” 

“Kyle-” 

“If I could stand I'd kick your ass.” 

“I'll let you do it later.” Kenny stays in the doorway, looking lost. Kyle hates every single flower that blooms around his stupid blond hair and his stupid freckles and the pretty way the sun hits his stupid blue eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean for any of it.”

Why is _that_ the first thing out of his mouth? Why the fuck is he rubbing it in? “I _know_.” 

Kenny rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I’m,” he starts but the rest of the sentence cracks apart. “I’m glad you’re okay. You scared the shit outta me. Why’d you... ” Kyle can hear honest fear choking Kenny’s voice, but he’s so tired and pissed off he almost doesn't care. 

Almost. 

“You don’t get to ask me questions,” Kyle says. His brow furrows, angry and confused and impatient. “What the _fuck_ were you trying to do?” 

There’s a pause before Kenny answers. “I thought Valganhorn was possessed, so I didn't want to kill him. And I had no idea he'd try-” 

“That's not what I mean.” Kyle already knows Valganhorn is dead and all the rest. He’s glad Mysterion- He's glad Kenny had killed him. It's hard to say what he means because it might've been in his head, might've been nothing, and he's sick of embarrassing himself.

Kenny seems to catch on anyway, with an expression that mimics _Oh, that_. He rubs at the back of his neck. “I had a plan,” he says, “I wanted to keep Mysterion out of it. But I forgot who I was sometimes. It got all mixed up.” He isn’t looking at Kyle. Instead, his gaze is near the foot of the bed somewhere. “And when you tried to,” he rubs at his eyes, down the bridge of his nose, still looking down, “to kiss me, I didn’t know what to do. You didn’t know who you were really kissing.” 

“Why didn’t you just _tell_ me?” Kyle snaps, tired of the fuck-around Kenny’s _still_ giving him. Unsure and uncaring about intent or meaning or that he might’ve been trying to not be a giant prick about it. Uncaring if Kenny spent night at the hospital, or if he fucked off home, or if he had any injuries of his own, or if—

“It isn’t safe.” Kenny finally stops rubbing at his eyes, leaving the skin around them red. He looks over at Kyle too, but there’s nothing in his wandering gaze. He looks drained.  “People want me dead. If they figure out you know Mysterion’s identity...” He lets Kyle fill in the rest. “I thought as long as it was just me, and not Mysterion, it might be okay.” The red around his eyes seems to seep into the whites, veins inflamed. “But it didn’t fucking matter. You almost died anyway.” 

Kyle frowns. “I’m not known for being cooperative.”

“No shit.” 

Kyle's quiet then. Nothing is making any more sense, still, and his chest hurts. Kenny was trying not to lead him on as Mysterion, and all the flirting was just Kenny being who he is. A flirt. And so what? There are lots of guys in the world. He doesn't need this. What even was this? A lie wrapped in a purple fucking cape. 

“I’m,” Kenny starts again, leaning heavily on the door frame. His face looks sunken, skin worn and not as tanned as the first time they’d met. There’s nothing relaxed about him. “I'm sorry I fucked it up so bad,” he says, “And I’m sorry I almost got you killed. You… You’re really amazing. You’re so much smarter than me, not that that’s saying a lot, I guess.” Kenny laughs at himself, looking sideways at the wall for a moment. “You figured everything out on your own and ended up saving _me_.” He looks back at Kyle then, all his typical ego washed away leaving behind someone Kyle can see, can understand, someone he'd already known for weeks now. “I wanted to say all that.” He shrugs. “Anyway...” 

He turns to leave, and something doesn't fit right, pieces are still falling apart in Kyle’s head. Why are they soul-linked? Why would he care about not flirting as Mysterion if he’s going to turn around and flirt with Kyle at school? Why all the flirting as Mysterion, then, if none of it fucking _meant_ anything? Why is he calling Kyle amazing now? 

The word leaps out of Kyle’s mouth like it could grab Kenny and hold him there. “ _Wait_.” 

Kenny stops in his tracks. 

Kyle frowns, his chest still aching, flowers sliding down the door frame all around wild blond hair. Falling falling falling—

 “Why didn't you kiss me?” 

Kenny blinks, frowns in confusion, waits a beat and says, “I told you.” He turns back around to face Kyle fully, still in the doorway. “You didn't know it was me.” 

“That's it?”

“It seemed kind of gross to-” 

Kyle cuts him off. “That's the only reason?” 

A few beats longer of confusion and then it clicks in Kenny’s head. A light might as well have turned on behind blue eyes. The flowers twist and curl all along the walls. “Yeah. That's all,” he says. He opens his mouth to say something else and shuts it, his gaze skirting all over Kyle's face and neck and chest. Kenny grips the doorframe harder and violet mist sneaks out between his fingers. He looks at Kyle’s eyes and Kyle can see his adam's apple bobbing as he speaks, his voice strained and nervous. 

“I _wanted_ to kiss you,” Kenny says. 

It hits Kyle like a face-first flop into cold water. But he doesn’t let it matter. 

“Do you… What does that mean for you?” He asks. Kenny just looks confused. Kyle re-words it as bluntly as he can: “Are you poly? It’s okay if you are, but I know I can’t do that.” 

“What?” Kenny actually looks surprised, but Kyle doesn’t know why. He’d hinted at it before and he seems like the kind of person who would be; free spirited, laid back. “I like to fuck around. But I don’t date more than one person at a time.” 

“So you like to fuck around while dating only one person?”

“No, that's not-” 

“See? That's why I have to fucking ask. You're fucking shit at explaining-” 

“I was trying to be really obvious. I hit on you _all_ the fucking time.” 

“You were kissing some girl at that party! And you flirted with Craig, and all the rumours about you-” 

“I thought you didn't care ab-” 

“I don't!” Kyle glares at the flowers trying to reach him until they coil back. “But I _like_ you, and I couldn't tell if I was just another fuck.” He feels water welling up in his eyes and he can’t, he just can’t cry about this. No one’s dead. It’s just his feelings, and when did they start to matter? “Nothing you did made any sense. _Mysterion_ made more sense.” 

“Oh.” 

“‘ _Oh’_?” 

When Kyle looks over at him again Kenny's face is turning red, starting to match the EXIT sign over the door. 

“You like me?” Kenny asks, his hand still gripping the doorframe beside him. 

“ _Holy fuck_ ,” Kyle hides his face in his palms, his own cheeks getting hotter and hotter. “I liked both of you. Which- don’t get me started.” He feels tears on his hands but squeezes his eyes to fight them off. “ _Mysterion_ didn't kiss me and then _you_ took me out for coffee out of fucking nowhere and then _you_ were kissing someone else _three_ _days_ _later_ and now you're _both_ the same _goddamn_ _person_ and I want to _punch_ you.” 

Kyle gives in and wipes at his eyes with the sleeve of his hospital shirt. He looks up again, worn out. The flowers start creeping along the ceiling and floor and walls, surrounding the hospital bed. Kyle can smell pollen and chrolafil. Earthy and warm. 

“I’m sorry.” Kenny steps in closer, and all the flowers come in with him. Kyle can barely breathe. “I wasn't trying to screw with you. I swear, dude.” 

“Uh huh,” Kyle says, watching peonies bloom and unfurl like yawning dragons across the windowsill. 

Kenny walks further into the room. “Can I stay?” 

Kyle has a lot of questions. He wonders about this ‘soul-link,’ if it was intentional on Kenny’s part or if it just sort of happened, chaotic like he’s starting to think all magic is. He wonders if more supernatural bullshit might be around and if there’s anything he can do to help everyone stay safe, if there are bad demons and good demons or if it’s all a lot more grey. He wonders if there’s an afterlife, but still thinks Kenny probably doesn’t know any better than he does. 

What _isn’t_ a question is his university degree and how hard he’s going to drop it. He’d already written half the email to his advisor. What isn’t a question, so much as a predisposition, is whether or not he wants Kenny McCormick to stay. 

“Yeah,” Kyle says as a pink rose grows down over his shoulder. It tickles his cheek. He feels a tear try to fall and he blinks it away.

Kenny walks in further. He’s easy about it but he’s not assertive, each step less sure of itself than the one before it. “I thought you only liked Mysterion,” Kenny says. He stops a foot from the bed. “You always seemed pissed off whenever I talked to you.” 

“You piss me off,” Kyle says, not pissed off at all. 

Kenny must hear it, that he’s pretty much over this; if Kyle had been in his place, he might've done the same thing. 

Opening slowly like the hundreds of flowers filling the cramped white room, Kenny’s mouth spreads into a lopsided grin. The gap between his teeth pulls at Kyle’s eyes. It's so fucking cute he doesn't know what to do with himself. “Can’t help it,” Kenny says, boughs of ferns cascading down around his head, neck, and shoulders, “You’re really hot when you’re angry.”

Kyle rolls his eyes as his heart attempts an aerial backflip and lands, shaking, at the bottom of his stomach. It bounces back up in place and starts to flutter. 

“To be clear,” Kyle starts, looking Kenny up and down, “I’m mad at you for _lying_ to me. Not for not kissing me.” 

“Okay.” 

“If you get over here and kiss me,” Kyle feels his words start to choke up, his head unfolding into a bright heat, “I’ll think about maybe forgiving you.” It comes out more like a question instead of the command he’d wanted to say. He swallows, throat dry.

Kenny freezes in place. He looks a lot like the first time Kyle had seen him, relaxed but a clear undercurrent of strain running behind his eyes. It’s in the corners of his failing smile, negating any confidence. The bags under his eyes are darker than Kyle’s ever seen them. There’s fear in the way he moves his shoulders.

“Are you sure?”

Kyle reaches over and pulls on his shirt-sleeve, gentle but sure. It doesn’t get Kenny any closer. But he watches light build back up in blue eyes, watches his shoulders relax, and feels the vines curl and grow up from under the hospital bed. Kenny smiles again, this one sweet, this one just for him, and Kyle’s breathing stutters.

One of Kenny’s hands moves until it’s holding Kyle’s upper arm, the other resting on the bed. He leans in, and all Kyle can smell is a warm spring morning layered with fog, an old forest silent in the middle of a summer night, a million wildflowers trying to fill every inch of a small room. It’s so sweet it makes him dizzy.

When Kenny finally kisses him his mouth is so much softer than Kyle had thought it might be. He presses up into the kiss, head spinning. His whole world feels overrun with unfurling flora and the warm chest set down along his own. 

Kyle moves back, taking slow breaths. 

“Oh,” Kenny says, nonsensical. 

When Kyle opens his eyes the room is full of sunflowers. They’re sprouting from the floor, breaking through the ceramic tile. More are growing through the window, violets surrounded in purple mist dropping from the ceiling, plumerias rooted into the walls. The sun from the small window covers the flowers in yellow light. 

Kenny’s toothy smile is brighter than every single one. 

 

 

 


End file.
